Bloody Foreigner, page 1
Also by Jacques K. Lee
The Nautilus and the Gang of three
Sega: The Mauritian Folk Dance
The Tongue: Mirror of the Immune System
Mauritius: Its Creole Language. The Ultimate Creole phrase book
Health Practitioners Companion
The Sugar Baron’s Women
East of Africa, South of India
Copyright © 2024 Jacques K. Lee
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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For some fellow passengers on the Ferdinand de Lesseps (September 1959)
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 mo
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.
