Tony Hendriks, Jamaican Paleface IT WAS Mother's Day in Britain last Sunday. I was being interviewed about my play 'Brixton Road Portraits'. The interviewer asked me if I was going to see my mother. "I hope not," I said, "She's dead." There was an awkward silence.
The same thing happens when St. Andrew's Old Girls ask me if Miss Jayne was my mother. "How is she?" they ask. I cruelly reply: "Alright for a pile of ash. Bit scattered but trying to get herself together."
My English mum arrived in Jamaica in 1947 to teach and look for a man who was tall, dark and handsome. She ended up marrying a man who was tall, dark and drank some. They divorced and she returned to her hometown of Bristol.
Outside her bedroom window stood a cedar of Lebanon tree spreading branches like huge hands in a hundred catcher's mitts, gaping to catch fly balls. (A cricket metaphor would be more West Indian but if you know cedar of Lebanon trees, you'll know what I mean. She loved that tree.
FOLLOWING HER DEATH
She slipped this mortal coil in 1986 toppled by the side-effects associated with diabetes and not looking after herself. The weeks following her death were a blur as they are when you lose someone so close. When the cemetery offered to scatter her ashes for us, avoiding added grief for my sister and I, we accepted.
I returned home to Jamaica; best thing I ever did. You don't know how lost you are 'til you find yourself back home. Twelve years later, I returned to England with guilt in my heart, and a whim to visit her, leave flowers and pay respects, only I had no idea where she was.
In the cemetery office, the groundskeeper had the broadest Bristol accent in existence. "List'n ere, we got bush and shrubs, yeah. Your ma's at shrub nummer twenty-free, s'easy to fine. Goo th'end see?" He pointed and my gaze followed. "Hanger roit, secon leff, goo th'round-bout, goo th'end, goo leff, it'll be on yuh roit. Roit? Goh tha?" Doubt glazed my eyes as he went through it again. "Goo th'corner, an count shrubs till you get to twenty-three. Roit?"
An Enigma machine could not have deciphered his instructions but nodding enthusiastically I left still ignorant of the difference between a bush and a shrub. (I know; there are no shrubs in the White House). I needed a degree in horticulture to find my mother's ashes.
I wandered, staring forlorn at the fauna, asking, "Are you shrub or bush?" when suddenly I came upon a small, auburn, tree. My mother was a copper coloured redhead. It was a sign. This was the place! I communed with her spirit. We spoke for a while (well, I spoke, she listened. It would've been worrying if she'd answered) and then I left.
Three years later, I returned to the office where a lady showed me a map of every scattered soul. Last time I'd been nowhere near my mother. I'd been on the other side of the cemetery. The riot of rust, autumnal brown and gold I'd been talking to was seasonal, not a sign. I bared my soul to someone else's bush.
A TREASURE HUNT
This time I followed the map like a treasure hunt. As I found her supposed shrubbery a ray of sunshine cleaved the clouds and a shaft of light poured through the branches of a tree. There was a flutter in the glare. I shaded my eyes but it was no angel, just a plastic shopping bag, orange, the colour of my mother's hair. I swear on my mother's shrubbery a host of angels could not have made it more momentous. Even if it was a scandal bag, caught in a branch and rustling in the wind, it was still my mother.
A voice behind me broke my trance. "Get tha bloody old bag out tha tree." Furious, I wheeled around, "That's no old bag," I screamed defiantly, "that's my mother!" The groundskeeper skulked off mumbling about mad people.
I sat on a bench to calm down and looked up. High on the hill overlooking the crematorium the cedar of Lebanon tree was silhouetted against the sky. It was the same one she loved from her bedroom window. She could see it now quite clearly from shrubbery number 23.
Tony Hendriks is a comedian. He can be e-mailed at palefaceuk@aol.com and you can find out where he is playing live at www.jamaicanpaleface.com
