Bloody Foreigner

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 1

A man who had been leaning against the railings, smoking a cigarette, turned with excitement in our direction and cried: ‘Africa!’

We were still days away from the equator but already the heat had become unbearable. With hardly any breeze, I was finding it suffocating.

‘I can see the coast of Africa,’ he said again. Not one of us got up to have a look.

We were sitting on deckchairs in a group, with nothing better to do. I was half asleep on mine, secretly wishing this voyage would go on forever. My fellow passengers, unlike me, couldn’t wait to reach their respective destinations. Not me.

I had been living in a world of fantasy up till then. Until I heard that word: ‘Africa!’ It shook me out of my snooze. It was as if a bucket of cold water had been thrown into my face. I forced myself to get up and take a look.

‘Where?’ I asked him. The Dark Continent was still nothing more than a greyish disruption of the deep blue sea in the far distance.

In two to three days our ship would be in Dar-es-Salaam, then Mombasa, then Dhibouti. After Port Saïd in Egypt, our last port would be Marseille. Once out of France, our language would change from Mauritian Creole to English, as we undertook a final sailing, across the English Channel to Newhaven – England!

No, it wasn’t because I was enjoying myself so much that I didn’t want this journey to end; it was what I would discover when I got there. As we sailed farther from Mauritius each day and nearer to an unknown world, I was beginning to feel sick; perhaps to panic was more appropriate. The passengers in our party would have friends waiting for them in England; British Council representatives to welcome them; universities to go to. They’d be well looked after – and me … Would anyone be there for me? Only if I didn’t get there would I never find out. Ignorance was bliss as long as it lasted. As our ship headed towards that ever-present continent, it reminded me that whatever I had let myself in for, there was no turning back now.

I had never been abroad before. The farthest I had ever got away from my little island was about a few hundred yards, in a fisherman’s pirogue. To me, England might as well have been the moon. My former confidence that so long as I could get there I’d be able to take care of myself was now evaporating fast. I had no idea what I’d do if … Where could I go, who could I approach for help, what assistance could I expect from complete strangers? How was I to explain what and why I had gone to Bradford for, and would they believe my story? Did I say my knowledge of English then was almost non-existent? So many questions … What then? What I was definite about was I couldn’t return home – I’d rather die.

No, I wasn’t running away from anything. I wasn’t in trouble with the police. I came from the nicest family a young boy could wish for: lots of siblings, two parents to care for us and I had never known hunger. What more could I possibly want? So why was I on this ship, on my own, on my way to an uncertain future? More pertinently, why did my family not stop me, or why did I escape from them?

In the first few days of this voyage, I was in denial. I was setting off on the greatest adventure of my life, one that my friends could only dream about. My dream had come true. I was leaving boring Mauritius for exciting England, where I was certain everything was better. I can’t deny I wasn’t encouraged when so many people had told me: ‘You’re so brave to be going to England at such a young age. You’ll do well there.’

I said no one would be waiting for me. That was not quite true. I had been living a lie ever since I had received my penfriend’s letter some months earlier. Lies had followed more lies. In just over two weeks I would have to face the truth. As I got nearer to my destination, I had been telling myself not to be surprised if she was not there to meet me. It was all a big misunderstanding. Even if I ever found her, she might deny she had invited me to come to Bradford, or what I was beginning to fear the most: her parents might send me away – my penpal was a 15-year-old schoolgirl.

***

When I had left my island, a few decades ago now, it had not been as if I was going away from it. Not like when a person leaves a town, say, on a bus, when they can see themselves being carried away from it, the surroundings are changing and soon they are in a different place. Leaving Mauritius on a big ship was not like that at all. I was hardly aware that we were sailing away that late afternoon. There was no change of scenery, the port behind us was there all the time, until I stopped looking and moved to a different part of the ship.

Drifting away from my country and family like that I experienced no wrench. I was too excited about the idea of it all: being on this luxurious liner, with envious people waving at us from the dock. Unlike them, I had so many exciting things to look forward to; an unknown world to discover; the beginning of a new life.

Until that day the biggest boat I had ever been on was on that twelve-foot long fishing pirogue. How can I forget it: it capsized when I got up to change seats! I was now on a French Messageries Maritimes passenger ship which had several decks, lots of cabins and as long as several buses lined one after another. At times I even forgot I was not on terra firma but on water. I was warned that I would be seasick, but so far no sign of it. Compared with today’s modern cruise ocean liners capable of carrying six thousand passengers or more, the Ferdinand de Lesseps was a miniature. But for us journeying to Europe in those days, it was among the latest of its kind; to me it was out of this world. I had to pinch myself in the first few days to confirm that this floating wonderland was going to be my home for a few weeks. From Madagascar, the last of the passengers joined us, increasing our total number to about 300. Only a handful of people I knew had ever been aboard such a ship, let alone on a voyage. My parents’ passage, in the opposite direction, from China to Mauritius, perhaps as exciting to them, was two months of discomfort and misery. There was no comparison.

Despite all the years that have since elapsed, I’m sure I would still recognise the peculiar odour of that vessel if I come across it again. It was present all the time, everywhere: a sort of metallic scent mixed with seawater and paint. I wouldn’t say it was a pleasant smell, but it was the only, constant reminder that I was no longer on familiar ground.

The other Mauritians in my small group had achieved their goals and were on their way to a new future, experiences denied to most of their friends – life at universities in England. All they had swotted several years for. New knowledge and qualifications awaited them. After three years they would return home with letters after their names and speaking fluent English. Employers would seek them out to offer them highly paid jobs. Not me.

After Port St Denis in Réunion, we set sail in the direction of Madagascar and reached Tamatave, on its east coast, just days later. The next day we were in Diego Suarez and on the third day of cruising along this long, cow-shaped island, we left Majunga to head towards Africa. The next morning, our ship was the only thing in this immense but calm Indian Ocean. Arriving and visiting these different ports almost every other day had left me with no time to think about England, or more precisely, to worry about what fate lay in store for me there.

One topic of conversation we kept overhearing the mainly French passengers talking about was the Second Indochina War in Vietnam. I don’t think anyone in our group joined them in their discussion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. So far I had been mainly in the company of other Mauritians and we spoke our Creole among ourselves. It didn’t feel as if I was overseas.

Not anymore. Not now that we were almost half-way to Europe. I started to feel a trepidation I had never known before when I asked myself for the first time: what am I doing on this ship?

***

My father knew I had penfriends from different countries as he had seen their letters, handed to him by the postman. The only mail he received on a regular basis came in buff envelopes: from the government, the Electricity Board; they were bills rather than letters. Mine came in airmail envelopes with red, white and blue borders and had foreign stamps, all from French-speaking countries, except for one – England. The reason for this was my English was elementary. My French was better as I was an avid reader of French comics and the films we watched at the cinemas were also in that language. My penfriend from England, Jean Starling, had seen my name and address in a magazine called Junior Digest which published particulars of youngsters looking for penfriends in the UK. She had written to me primarily in order to get some Mauritian stamps.

We had exchanged letters every other month or so and among some of the many lies I can still remember telling her to impress her were: I had completed my Cambridge School Certificate, I was an orphan, and I was five-foot-nine. I had sent her a photo I had taken of a sugar plantation general manager’s mansion and told her that was the house I lived in until it was burnt down, killing both my parents. I was now running one of my uncle’s village shops. That was my fantasy.

I had told similar stories to all my other penfriends in France, Belgium and Switzerland. No guilty conscience: they would never find out the truth, as they were thousands of miles away. I was afraid that telling them about my real life, which was so boring, could have given them an excuse to stop corresponding with me. From what they had told me about their countries, I’d realised how backwards and insignificant Mauritius was and it made me yearn to go and live in Europe. That was my dream.

The reality was something else. Since the age of twelve, after primary school, I had spent my life working full-time in my father’s shop. That was what I was destined to be for the rest of my life: a shop worker. But unlike other Chinese boys in similar situations to mine, I had begun to hate it. I found my existence in a small village boring. Nothing exciting ever happened. The only excitement I could remember was waiting impatiently to discover Pepsi Cola for the first time. Its arrival in Mauritius had been widely publicised for weeks and we children couldn’t wait to taste it. After that there was nothing to look forward to. I forget, there was another exciting event before my departure: the arrival of Princess Margaret. She was such a lovely woman and the whole island fell in love with her. Some of us, however, thought she was strange in one respect: despite the heat, she wore white gloves to shake hands with people. Did she think our hands were dirty?

All we could see wherever we looked was water, until the sugar canes grew tall and upright and hid the turquoise sea from view. The whole island itself then turned into a green sea: of cane leaves. Boring. Unfrequented sandy beaches surrounded our country but unlike overseas visitors who just lay there, we islanders used to head straight for the shade of the casuarina trees after a swim in the sea.

Some days I used to daydream that nothing could beat seeing wild animals in a zoo: lions, tigers, elephants, crocodiles and others that we’d only seen in Tarzan films. All we had in our forests were monkeys and deer; no one would call these animals dangerous as they were even frightened of children. Boring. Getting through each day, from seven o’clock in the morning to seven o’clock at night, doing the same monotonous routine of waiting for, and serving, customers, was like an eternity. I lived in the shop seven days a week, with nowhere to go, no distractions; to me it was like being in a prison. I was dying for adventures, foreign travels, even to live dangerously – anything but working in a village shop. I wanted more excitement in my life. Like watching a live football match in Europe – how my friends would be envious! Oh, to go to a pop concert to see my idols in person! In Mauritius we could only listen to them on records; there was no television to watch them perform.

***

My penfriends had told me that they visited other countries for their holidays. We were stuck in our tiny island with nowhere to go. Boring. Anyway, only school children had holidays, shop workers like me – despite being of school age – worked every day, all year round. Anywhere else must be better than my life in Mauritius.

Some six months earlier I had asked all of my foreign penpals if they could help me to find a job in their city, to enable me to work and finance my education in their country. It was just a fanciful idea, something to write about. I knew I couldn’t even pass the entrance exam to get into a secondary school and for somebody like me to think of going to Europe to study was, to put it mildly, laughable. Where and how did one buy a passage on a ship to leave the country? It certainly was not as simple as going to the right bus stop to catch a bus. I was a village boy who had only known a country roughly 40 miles long by 30 miles wide; only well-educated people knew how to go abroad.

On a world map I could see there were so many countries with strange names between Mauritius and Europe, and England was on the other side of that continent. Once abroad, how would I find my way and get to where I wanted to go? How would I communicate with people in those countries? I only spoke our made-up language called Creole, which non-Mauritians wouldn’t understand. One teacher had told us: ‘Creole is not like English or French. It’s a spoken language, not a written one. There are no books to teach it. Only foreigners who have lived in Mauritius can learn to speak it.’

I was certain people in Europe wouldn’t even have heard of it. Did I say I spoke only Creole? There I go again, even now I find it hard to stop lying. Chinese was my first language. At home I spoke nothing but Chinese ever since I was old enough to talk, then I picked up Creole from other children in the streets. Were there Chinese people in Europe? Or Indians? I could converse in a dialect called Bhojpury in which our Indian customers spoke to us. But I dismissed that straightaway as my vocabulary in that tongue was limited to shopping language: ‘one pound of sugar, ten pounds of rice, we’re out of dried fish, two rupees is the final price.’

***

I can still remember how I waited and waited, more out of curiosity, for my penfriends’ replies. I didn’t think for one moment that any one of them would say something like: No problem, come. I was therefore not really disappointed or upset when no letters came from the three Francophone countries. I never heard from them again. I did not expect to hear from Jean Starling either. England was at the bottom of my wish list due mainly to its language and I didn’t lose any sleep over her silence. Several weeks later, however, the postman brought me a letter from her. I didn’t tear it open to read it. My first thought was: at least the English girl was polite enough to take the trouble to reply. I expected to read: Sorry, but …

How wrong I was! She replied in the affirmative to my preposterous request. What was I to do now? Should I tell her I was not serious. I didn’t mean it. It was a joke. I just wanted to see if anyone would be mad enough to take me seriously. Anyway, I wouldn’t know how to get to England. Only bright students with good Higher School Certificate results could aspire to go to England to study. Jean’s letter brought me the best news of my life but I wasn’t able to share it with anyone – they would only have laughed at me. Nor did I tell any of my siblings and, especially, my parents. They would have done everything to stop me. Nobody in our family had ever left our country, and I was the seventh child.

For days I thought of nothing but this sudden possibility to leave my boring island and start a new life in England. England! I got out our tattered world atlas to look up where this City of Bradford, Yorkshire, was. Until then I had done no other homework on England or the English. I had never even bothered to ask anyone why we had road signs and notices in French as well as in English – the latter was seldom read by us. All I knew, from what I’d heard, mainly from other children: the British had captured our island from the French a long time ago. What I was not told was why the French people were still here but we’d be lucky to meet an Englishman in the streets. Educated islanders spoke French, not English, and our newspapers were in the former language. When I finally located Bradford on the map, I was downhearted to discover that it was a long way away from London.

I remember reading Jean’s precious letter several times. I was never 100 per cent sure whether she had really understood what I was asking her to do for me. More importantly, had I really understood what she had said? It used to take me ages to write a letter in English, and just as long to read hers, with the aid of my French-English, English-French dictionary. At least she had neat and legible handwriting, which helped.

While I was deciding what to do, I was at the same time half expecting to get a second letter from Jean, perhaps saying something like: Forget my other letter, it’s not possible for you to come to Bradford.

No such letter came. I decided to write to her to accept her offer before she could find an excuse to change her mind. Once it was posted, I despaired. What was I to do now? How could I make my way to England? I was only fantasizing. The only world I knew was my family, our shop and our customers.

As the days turned into weeks and no letter came from England, I became bolder and started to think differently. Why was I hesitating, I asked myself, now that I knew for certain that I could leave Mauritius if I was really determined to go? I started to make discreet enquiries without telling anyone; I knew what their inevitable reaction would be. My best source proved to be a clerk in a travel agency in Port Louis, our capital. He told me, among other things, that as Mauritius was a British colony, I was British by birth, and all I needed to go to England was a passport. However, I would need my father’s signature to apply for one, as I was still a minor. That could wait. My father’s signature was a simple one; should he refuse to sign, I could easily learn to forge it. Otherwise there was no stopping me now. What a discovery: I was British, just like people born in England, not just a Mauritian!

When I had all the requisite information, I couldn’t wait for Jean’s letter and wrote to tell her that I could get a place on a French ship leaving for France in October, a few months away. From that letter onwards, waiting for each of her letters to arrive was agony. My greatest fear was she would stop writing to me. What then?

When her next most important letter finally arrived, I held it in trembling hands, unable to open it, in case it brought bad news. It began with an apology for the delay in replying, as she was busy with her mock O-level exams, whatever these exams were. What mattered was she had come back to me. She said, among other things, that it was a good time to arrive in England, before it got too cold, although it would be after the start of the academic year. What was academic year? All these new words. After reading the letter several times; I had never read another letter so many times, I couldn’t find anywhere anything negative, like: Not possible, problem, you can’t come. I did not dare show the letter to a more educated person for confirmation. After I had finally convinced, and satisfied, myself that all was well, I started to investigate another matter that was, to me, of secondary importance: how much it would cost … As I said above, being an ignorant and uneducated village boy, I had no idea whatsoever about the procedure regarding travel outside my country. With the help of my travel agent, I knew it would involve travelling by ship to France and then by train to England, but he forgot to ask whether I had the money. With hindsight I now think he didn’t take me seriously.

I had been able to save most of my wages since I had started work in my father’s shop in l’Union St Aubin as I lived in the shop and had virtually no expenses. Even my clothes were made by my mother. When I eventually got confirmation of how much I would need for my passage, was I relieved to discover that I had just more than enough for the fare in third class on the ship!

***

As I had feared, when I finally broke the news to them, my parents – even my siblings – did everything to stop me from going to England. I was prepared for a long battle. Nothing but nothing would stop me from leaving. The first thing I did in preparation to overcome their objections was to change my penfriend’s sex. Yes! Telling them that a girl was behind my decision to leave the country would have amounted to asking them to lock me up somewhere and throw away the key.

Jean is a boy’s name in Mauritius. Mauritians with that name changed it to John once in England to avoid confusion. I told my parents my penfriend’s name was John Starling. Then to make my story more convincing, and more acceptable, I gave his age as 19, two years older than me. In Mauritius people who owned a factory were rich, so I told my family that John’s parents had a factory in Bradford and had a job waiting for me there. Shortly after I invented a new fib that would make them envy my good luck and stop worrying about my madness. I told them that my penpal’s father said I would be paid £10 per week as a starting wage. Telling lies was so easy. I had no idea what factory workers in England earned but, too late, I learned later that I had rather over-exaggerated it. That was a lot of money in the late Fifties. To my great surprise, no one questioned it or asked to see the letter. I couldn’t believe how gullible people could be. Or was I becoming too good at telling lies?

At the end of several weeks, during which my parents had got some relatives who had studied in England to talk me out of going there – all failed. Gradually, and unexpectedly, I sensed that my father was beginning to relent when he revealed to me something he’d never told any of us: ‘Do you know how old I was when I left China for Mauritius?’ he asked when we had a quiet moment together in the shop. I gave him a blank look. We had never been curious enough to ask him.

‘About … twenty … twenty-five?’

‘I was seventeen, exactly your age.’

Coming out of the blue like that, it struck me that by sharing this fact with me, he was, at long last, empathizing with me. From that day he gradually stopped objecting so vehemently, and when we were just the two of us in the shop one morning – not easy with several other siblings around – he asked me discreetly if I knew how much it was going to cost to go to England.

I told him the total fare, down to the last rupee, for the passage in third class. He didn’t comment on it but appeared to make a mental note. A couple of days after that last conversation, he offered to pay the difference in fares for me to travel in second class. From what he and my mother had told us at different times, we all knew their long voyage from China was certainly no picnic; my father wanted to spare me the same ordeal. I was glad he obviously was not aware that modern ships had improved in comfort. Small village shopkeepers like my parents just about eked out a living and only with careful thrift could they manage to feed and educate our big family. I decided not to tell my siblings about our father’s sudden generosity towards me.

***

I was finally given the green light! I was ready to go! I bought two suitcases, the biggest ones I could find, as I had been amassing a lot of things to take with me. My father also paid for me to have two suits made, one size bigger, as we all believed that I was still growing. For the first time I was going to wear long trousers. Even the new pair of shoes I’d bought were one size bigger. My mother insisted I took a Chinese quilt with me. She too must have done some homework on my behalf and had learnt that England was a cold country. Later I received money gifts from some relatives.

I had found telling lies so easy to do. The more of them I contrived, the easier it got. At the time it had never crossed my mind what I’d do if I was found out before I left home, like discovering that John Starling was Jean, a mere schoolgirl. The most important thing then was my imminent departure. My adventure was about to begin. I did not think for a moment that I would miss my family, my country or that anything could go wrong. I was that confident. My new family would be Mr and Mrs Starling and their daughter. I had complete faith in Jean. Another person with more intelligence who was contemplating what I was doing would have been worried sick about the possible consequences. Not the fool that I was.

***

Now with Africa in sight, I started to think differently. Doubts began to set in. A lot of things could have happened since Jean’s last letter. She had had more time to think about what she was letting herself in for. There was no guarantee that I would get a job, or earn enough to take care of myself. I had no experience of any kind of work except as a worker in a village shop in a Third World country. What good