always shows up on first nights, if only for the free booze at the after-party
even though a few days ago he accused her of selling out when he cornered her outside Brixton tube station on her way home from rehearsal
and persuaded her to have a drink with him at the Ritzy where they sat in the upstairs bar surrounded by posters of the independent films they’d been going to see together since they first met as students at drama school
films like Pink Flamingos, starring the great drag queen, Divine, Born in Flames, Daughters of the Dust, Farewell My Concubine, Pratibha Parmar’s A Place of Rage and Handsworth Songs by the Black Audio Film Collective
films that inspired her own aesthetics as a theatre-maker
although she’s never admitted her equally lowbrow tastes to Sylvester, who’s too much of a political purist to understand
such as her addictions to Dynasty and Dallas, the original series and their recent incarnations
or America’s Top Model or Millionaire Matchmaker or Big Brother and the rest …
Amma looked around the bar at the other alternatives who’d moved into Brixton when it was crime-addled but affordable
these people were her people, they’d lived through two riots and were proud of their multiracial social circles and bloodlines, like Sylvester, who’d gone on a pilgrimage here to visit the gay community centre that came and went and met the man who became his life partner, Curwen, newly arrived from St Lucia
they used to make such a striking couple
Sylvester, or Sylvie, was then blond and pretty, he spent most of the eighties wearing dresses, his long hair flowing down his back
he was out to challenge society’s gender expectations, long before the current trend, he’s taken to complaining, I was there first
Curwen, freckled and light brown, might wear a turban, kilt, lederhosen and full make-up
when he felt like it
to challenge various other expectations
he said
Sylvester’s now grey, balding, bearded, and is never seen in anything other than a threadbare Chinese worker’s suit
which he claims is an original from eBay
whereas Curwen wears a retro donkey jacket and denim dungarees
two young men sat at the table next to them, awkward and incongruous with their office haircuts, smooth cheeks, crisp suits, polished shoes
Amma and Sylvester exchanged looks, they hated the interlopers who were colonizing the neighbourhood, who patronized the chi-chi eateries and bars that now replaced a stretch of the indoor market previously known for stalls selling parrot fish, yam, ackee, Scotch bonnet peppers, African materials, weaves, Dutch pots, giant Nigerian land snails and pickled green eggs from China
these upmarket places also employed security guards to keep the locals out
because while their clientele loved slumming it in SW2 or SW9
they couldn’t hide the fact that SW1 and SW3 were in their DNA
Sylvester was very active in the Keep Brixton Real Campaign
he’d lost none of his revolutionary zeal
which wasn’t necessarily a good thing
Amma sipped her seventh coffee of the day, this one laced with Drambuie, while Sylvester slugged beer from a bottle, the only way a revolutionary should drink it, according to him
he still ran his socialist theatre company, The 97%, which toured to fringe venues and ‘hard-to-reach communities’, which she should also still be doing
Amma, you should be taking your plays to community centres and libraries, not to the middle-class bastards at the National
she replied that the last time she took a show to a library, the audience was mainly made up of homeless people who were sleeping at best, snoring at worst
it was about fifteen years ago, she vowed never to again
social inclusion is more important than success, or should it be called sick-cess? Sylvester replied, and Amma couldn’t convince him she was right to move on to bigger things as he kept knocking back the beers she paid for (well, you must be earning a lot now you’ve hit the big time)
she argued it was her right to be directing at the National and it was the theatre’s job to make sure they attracted audiences beyond the middle-class day-trippers from the Home Counties, reminding him this included his parents, a retired banker and homemaker from Berkshire, who came to London for its culture, parents who supported him, even when he came out as a teenager
he’d once let slip while drunk that he got a monthly allowance
(she was far too nice to ever remind him of this)
the thing is, she said, while troublemaking on the periphery’s all well and good, we also have to make a difference inside the mainstream, we all pay taxes that fund these theatres, right?
Sylvester offered up the smug expression of a tax-dodging outlaw at least I do now, she said, and you should
he sat back, his eyes watery from the beers, silently judging her, she knew that look, the drink was about to bring out a viciousness otherwise absent from her good friend
admit it, Ams, you’ve dropped your principles for ambition and you’re now establishment with a capital E, he said, you’re a turncoat
she stood up, gathered up her African print patchwork bag and left the premises
a little further down the high street she looked back and saw him leaning against the wall of the Ritzy rolling up a cigarette
still rolling up
you stay there, Sylvie.
4
Amma walked to her house in the dark, still grateful she’d become a homeowner so late in life, at a time when she was practically homeless
first of all Jack Staniforth died and his son Jonathan, who’d been chomping at the bit for years at his father’s simply scandalous decision not to financially capitalize on the King’s Cross regeneration scheme that would one day run trains direct from London to Paris
gave the Citizens of Freedomia three months’ notice
devastated, Amma nonetheless had to admit she’d had a spectacularly good run as she’d never paid a single copper penny in rent in what had become one of the most expensive cities on the planet
she cried when she left her former office with its jogging sized dimensions and windows overlooking the trains that rolled into the station from the north of England
she couldn’t afford commercial rents and wasn’t eligible for subsidized housing
Amma sofa surfed until she was offered someone’s spare room
she’d come full circle
then her mother died, devoured from the inside by the ruthless, ravenous, carnivorous disease that started off with one organ before moving on to destroy the others
Amma saw it as symptomatic and symbolic of her mother’s oppression
Mum never found herself, she told friends, she accepted her subservient position in the marriage and rotted from the inside
she could barely look at her father at the funeral
not long after, he too died of heart failure in his sleep; Amma believed he’d willed it upon himself because he couldn’t live