WEBVTT

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This is a photograph

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of a man whom for many years

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I plotted to kill.

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This is my father,

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Clinton George "Bageye" Grant.

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He's called Bageye because he has

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permanent bags under his eyes.

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As a 10-year-old, along with my siblings,

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I dreamt of scraping off the poison

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from fly-killer paper into his coffee,

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grounded down glass and sprinkling it

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over his breakfast,

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loosening the carpet on the stairs

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so he would trip and break his neck.

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But come the day, he would always

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skip that loose step,

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he would always bow out of the house

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without so much as a swig of coffee

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or a bite to eat.

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And so for many years,

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I feared that my father would die

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before I had a chance to kill him.

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(Laughter)

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Up until our mother asked him to leave

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and not come back,

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Bageye had been a terrifying ogre.

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He teetered permanently
on the verge of rage,

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rather like me, as you see.

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He worked nights
at Vauxhall Motors in Luton

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and demanded total silence
throughout the house,

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so that when we came home from school

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at 3:30 in the afternoon, we would huddle

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beside the TV,
and rather like safe-crackers,

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we would twiddle
with the volume control knob

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on the TV so it was almost inaudible.

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And at times, when we were like this,

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so much "Shhh," so much "Shhh"

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going on in the house

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that I imagined us to be like

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the German crew of a U-boat

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creeping along the edge of the ocean

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whilst up above, on the surface,

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HMS Bageye patrolled

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ready to drop death charges

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at the first sound of any disturbance.

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So that lesson was the lesson that

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"Do not draw attention to yourself

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either in the home
or outside of the home."

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Maybe it's a migrant lesson.

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We were to be below the radar,

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so there was no communication, really,

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between Bageye and us
and us and Bageye,

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and the sound
that we most looked forward to,

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you know when you're a child and you want

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your father to come home
and it's all going to be happy

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and you're waiting for that sound
of the door opening.

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Well the sound that we looked forward to

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was the click of the door closing,

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which meant he'd gone
and would not come back.

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So for three decades,

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I never laid eyes on my father,
nor he on me.

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We never spoke to each other
for three decades,

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and then a couple of years ago, I decided

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to turn the spotlight on him.

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"You are being watched.

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Actually, you are.

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You are being watched."

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That was his mantra to us, his children.

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Time and time again
he would say this to us.

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And this was the 1970s, it was Luton,

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where he worked at Vauxhall Motors,

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and he was a Jamaican.

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And what he meant was,

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you as a child of a Jamaican immigrant

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are being watched

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to see which way you turn, to see whether

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you conform to the host nation's
stereotype of you,

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of being feckless, work-shy,

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destined for a life of crime.

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You are being watched,

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so confound their expectations of you.

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To that end, Bageye and his friends,

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mostly Jamaican,

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exhibited a kind of Jamaican bella figura:

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Turn your best side to the world,

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show your best face to the world.

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If you have seen some of the images

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of the Caribbean people arriving

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in the '40s and '50s,

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you might have noticed
that a lot of the men

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wear trilbies.

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Now, there was no tradition
of wearing trilbies in Jamaica.

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They invented that tradition
for their arrival here.

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They wanted to project themselves in a way

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that they wanted to be perceived,

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so that the way they looked

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and the names that they gave themselves

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defined them.

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So Bageye is bald and has baggy eyes.

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Tidy Boots is very fussy
about his footwear.

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Anxious is always anxious.

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Clock has one arm longer than the other.

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(Laughter)

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And my all-time favorite was
the guy they called Summerwear.

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When Summerwear came to this country

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from Jamaica
in the early '60s, he insisted

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on wearing light summer suits,

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no matter the weather,

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and in the course
of researching their lives,

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I asked my mom,
"Whatever became of Summerwear?"

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And she said, "He caught a cold and died."
(Laughter)

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But men like Summerwear

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taught us the importance of style.

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Maybe they exaggerated their style

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because they thought
that they were not considered

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to be quite civilized,

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and they transferred
that generational attitude

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or anxiety onto us, the next generation,

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so much so that when I was growing up,

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if ever on the television news or radio

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a report came up about a black person

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committing some crime —

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a mugging, a murder, a burglary —

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we winced along with our parents,

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because they were letting the side down.

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You did not just represent yourself.

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You represented the group,

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and it was a terrifying thing
to come to terms with,

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in a way, that maybe you were going

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to be perceived in the same light.

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So that was what needed to be challenged.

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Our father and many of his colleagues

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exhibited a kind of transmission
but not receiving.

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They were built to transmit
but not receive.

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We were to keep quiet.

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When our father did speak to us,

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it was from the pulpit of his mind.

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They clung to certainty in the belief

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that doubt would undermine them.

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But when I am working in my house

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and writing, after a day's writing,
I rush downstairs

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and I'm very excited to talk
about Marcus Garvey or Bob Marley

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and words are tripping out
of my mouth like butterflies

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and I'm so excited
that my children stop me,

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and they say, "Dad, nobody cares."

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(Laughter)

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But they do care, actually.

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They cross over.

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Somehow they find their way to you.

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They shape their lives
according to the narrative of your life,

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as I did with my father
and my mother, perhaps,

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and maybe Bageye did with his father.

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And that was clearer to me

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in the course of looking at his life

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and understanding, as they say,

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the Native Americans say,

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"Do not criticize the man
until you can walk

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in his moccasins."

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But in conjuring his life, it was okay

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and very straightforward to portray

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a Caribbean life in England in the 1970s

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with bowls of plastic fruit,

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polystyrene ceiling tiles,

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settees permanently sheathed

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in their transparent covers
that they were delivered in.

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But what's more difficult to navigate

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is the emotional landscape

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between the generations,

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and the old adage
that with age comes wisdom

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is not true.

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With age comes
the veneer of respectability

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and a veneer of uncomfortable truths.

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But what was true was that my parents,

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my mother, and my father
went along with it,

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did not trust the state to educate me.

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So listen to how I sound.

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They determined that they would
send me to a private school,

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but my father worked at Vauxhall Motors.

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It's quite difficult to fund
a private school education

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and feed his army of children.

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I remember going on to the school

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for the entrance exam, and my father said

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to the priest — it was a Catholic school —

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he wanted a better
"heducation" for the boy,

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but also, he, my father,

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never even managed to pass worms,

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never mind entrance exams.

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But in order to fund my education,

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he was going to have to do
some dodgy stuff,

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so my father would fund my education

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by trading in illicit goods
from the back of his car,

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and that was made even more tricky because

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my father, that's not his car by the way.

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My father aspired to have a car like that,

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but my father had a beaten-up Mini,

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and he never, being a Jamaican
coming to this country,

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he never had a driving license,

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he never had any insurance
or road tax or MOT.

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He thought, "I know how to drive;

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why do I need the state's validation?"

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But it became a little tricky
when we were stopped by the police,

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and we were stopped a lot by the police,

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and I was impressed by the way

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that my father dealt with the police.

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He would promote
the policeman immediately,

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so that P.C. Bloggs became
Detective Inspector Bloggs

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in the course of the conversation

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and wave us on merrily.

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So my father was exhibiting
what we in Jamaica

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called "playing fool to catch wise."

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But it lent also an idea

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that actually he was being diminished

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or belittled by the policeman —

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as a 10-year-old boy, I saw that —

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but also there was an ambivalence
towards authority.

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So on the one hand, there was

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a mocking of authority,

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but on the other hand,
there was a deference

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towards authority,

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and these Caribbean people

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had an overbearing obedience
towards authority,

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which is very striking,
very strange in a way,

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because migrants
are very courageous people.

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They leave their homes.
My father and my mother

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left Jamaica and they traveled
4,000 miles,

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and yet they were infantilized by travel.

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They were timid,

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and somewhere along the line,

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the natural order was reversed.

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The children became
the parents to the parent.

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The Caribbean people came
to this country with a five-year plan:

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they would work, some money,
and then go back,

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but the five years became 10,
the 10 became 15,

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and before you know it,
you're changing the wallpaper,

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and at that point,
you know you're here to stay.

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Although there's still
the kind of temporariness

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that our parents felt about being here,

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but we children knew that the game was up.

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I think there was a feeling that

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they would not be able
to continue with the ideals

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of the life that they expected.

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The reality was very much different.

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And also, that was true of the reality

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of trying to educate me.

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Having started the process,
my father did not continue.

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It was left to my mother to educate me,

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and as George Lamming would say,

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it was my mother who fathered me.

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Even in his absence,
that old mantra remained:

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You are being watched.

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But such ardent watchfulness
can lead to anxiety,

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so much so that years later,
when I was investigating

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why so many young black men

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were diagnosed with schizophrenia,

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six times more than they ought to be,

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I was not surprised
to hear the psychiatrist say,

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"Black people are schooled in paranoia."

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And I wonder
what Bageye would make of that.

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Now I also had a 10-year-old son,

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and turned my attention to Bageye

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and I went in search of him.

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He was back in Luton, he was now 82,

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and I hadn't seen him for 30-odd years,

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and when he opened the door,

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I saw this tiny little man with lambent,
smiling eyes,

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and he was smiling,
and I'd never seen him smile.

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I was very disconcerted by that.

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But we sat down,
and he had a Caribbean friend with him,

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talking some old time talk,

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and my father would look at me,

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and he looked at me as if I would

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miraculously disappear as I had arisen.

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And he turned to his friend, and he said,

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"This boy and me have a deep,
deep connection,

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deep, deep connection."

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But I never felt that connection.

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If there was a pulse, it was very weak

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or hardly at all.

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And I almost felt
in the course of that reunion

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that I was auditioning
to be my father's son.

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When the book came out,

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it had fair reviews
in the national papers,

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but the paper of choice
in Luton is not The Guardian,

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it's the Luton News,

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and the Luton News
ran the headline about the book,

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"The Book That May Heal
a 32-Year-Old Rift."

00:13:16.518 --> 00:13:19.633
And I understood that could also represent

00:13:19.633 --> 00:13:22.160
the rift between
one generation and the next,

00:13:22.160 --> 00:13:26.069
between people like me
and my father's generation,

00:13:26.069 --> 00:13:28.292
but there's no tradition in Caribbean life

00:13:28.292 --> 00:13:30.178
of memoirs or biographies.

00:13:30.178 --> 00:13:34.340
It was a tradition that you didn't chat
about your business in public.

00:13:34.340 --> 00:13:39.119
But I welcomed that title,
and I thought actually, yes,

00:13:39.119 --> 00:13:41.064
there is a possibility that this

00:13:41.064 --> 00:13:44.221
will open up conversations
that we'd never had before.

00:13:44.684 --> 00:13:48.388
This will close the generation gap,
perhaps.

00:13:49.126 --> 00:13:51.870
This could be an instrument of repair.

00:13:51.870 --> 00:13:54.544
And I even began to feel that this book

00:13:54.544 --> 00:13:57.082
may be perceived by my father

00:13:57.082 --> 00:13:59.878
as an act of filial devotion.

00:14:01.150 --> 00:14:03.113
Poor, deluded fool.

00:14:04.698 --> 00:14:08.030
Bageye was stung
by what he perceived to be

00:14:08.030 --> 00:14:11.405
the public airing of his shortcomings.

00:14:11.913 --> 00:14:14.124
He was stung by my betrayal,

00:14:14.124 --> 00:14:16.926
and he went to the newspapers the next day

00:14:16.926 --> 00:14:18.759
and demanded a right of reply,

00:14:18.759 --> 00:14:20.596
and he got it with the headline

00:14:20.596 --> 00:14:22.788
"Bageye Bites Back."

00:14:23.690 --> 00:14:26.397
And it was a coruscating account
of my betrayal.

00:14:26.397 --> 00:14:28.686
I was no son of his.

00:14:29.722 --> 00:14:31.420
He recognized in his mind that his colors

00:14:31.420 --> 00:14:34.257
had been dragged through the mud,
and he couldn't allow that.

00:14:34.257 --> 00:14:36.485
He had to restore his dignity,
and he did so,

00:14:36.485 --> 00:14:39.170
and initially,
although I was disappointed,

00:14:39.170 --> 00:14:41.002
I grew to admire that stance.

00:14:41.002 --> 00:14:43.723
There was still fire
bubbling through his veins,

00:14:43.723 --> 00:14:46.619
even though he was 82 years old.

00:14:47.370 --> 00:14:50.117
And if it meant that we would now return

00:14:50.117 --> 00:14:52.717
to 30 years of silence,

00:14:52.717 --> 00:14:57.299
my father would say,
"If it's so, then it's so."

00:14:59.442 --> 00:15:02.322
Jamaicans will tell you
that there's no such thing as facts,

00:15:02.322 --> 00:15:04.906
there are only versions.

00:15:04.906 --> 00:15:07.247
We all tell ourselves
the versions of the story

00:15:07.247 --> 00:15:09.573
that we can best live with.

00:15:09.676 --> 00:15:12.374
Each generation builds up an edifice

00:15:12.374 --> 00:15:14.830
which they are reluctant
or sometimes unable

00:15:14.830 --> 00:15:17.388
to disassemble,

00:15:17.388 --> 00:15:20.629
but in the writing,
my version of the story

00:15:20.629 --> 00:15:23.495
began to change,

00:15:23.495 --> 00:15:26.066
and it was detached from me.

00:15:26.651 --> 00:15:29.370
I lost my hatred of my father.

00:15:29.370 --> 00:15:32.507
I did no longer want him to die
or to murder him,

00:15:33.617 --> 00:15:36.310
and I felt free,

00:15:37.427 --> 00:15:40.450
much freer than I'd ever felt before.

00:15:42.411 --> 00:15:44.783
And I wonder whether that freedness

00:15:44.783 --> 00:15:47.367
could be transferred to him.

00:15:49.148 --> 00:15:52.183
In that initial reunion,

00:15:54.591 --> 00:15:56.745
I was struck by an idea that I had

00:15:56.745 --> 00:15:59.793
very few photographs of myself

00:15:59.823 --> 00:16:02.120
as a young child.

00:16:02.960 --> 00:16:04.764
This is a photograph of me,

00:16:04.764 --> 00:16:06.763
nine months old.

00:16:06.763 --> 00:16:08.916
In the original photograph,

00:16:08.916 --> 00:16:11.967
I'm being held up by my father, Bageye,

00:16:11.967 --> 00:16:14.661
but when my parents separated, my mother

00:16:14.661 --> 00:16:16.922
excised him from all aspects of our lives.

00:16:16.922 --> 00:16:20.389
She took a pair of scissors
and cut him out of every photograph,

00:16:20.389 --> 00:16:24.568
and for years, I told myself
the truth of this photograph

00:16:24.568 --> 00:16:26.773
was that you are alone,

00:16:26.773 --> 00:16:29.318
you are unsupported.

00:16:29.773 --> 00:16:32.273
But there's another way
of looking at this photograph.

00:16:32.273 --> 00:16:35.234
This is a photograph
that has the potential

00:16:35.234 --> 00:16:36.693
for a reunion,

00:16:36.693 --> 00:16:40.243
a potential to be reunited with my father,

00:16:40.243 --> 00:16:43.774
and in my yearning
to be held up by my father,

00:16:43.774 --> 00:16:46.722
I held him up to the light.

00:16:47.371 --> 00:16:50.398
In that first reunion,

00:16:52.418 --> 00:16:55.142
it was very awkward and tense moments,

00:16:55.142 --> 00:16:56.484
and to lessen the tension,

00:16:56.484 --> 00:16:59.269
we decided to go for a walk.

00:16:59.822 --> 00:17:01.823
And as we walked, I was struck

00:17:01.823 --> 00:17:04.219
that I had reverted to being the child

00:17:04.219 --> 00:17:07.382
even though I was now
towering above my father.

00:17:07.382 --> 00:17:09.661
I was almost a foot taller than my father.

00:17:09.661 --> 00:17:12.634
He was still the big man,

00:17:12.634 --> 00:17:15.352
and I tried to match his step.

00:17:17.239 --> 00:17:19.047
And I realized that he was walking

00:17:19.047 --> 00:17:21.457
as if he was still under observation,

00:17:21.457 --> 00:17:23.770
but I admired his walk.

00:17:23.770 --> 00:17:26.321
He walked like a man

00:17:26.321 --> 00:17:29.112
on the losing side of the F.A. Cup Final

00:17:29.112 --> 00:17:33.064
mounting the steps
to collect his condolence medal.

00:17:33.404 --> 00:17:35.727
There was dignity in defeat.

00:17:36.511 --> 00:17:37.969
Thank you.

00:17:37.969 --> 00:17:40.554
(Applause)