Empathy is not a Colour. Chapter 9

He arrived early, 10 minutes or so, but he wasn't the first. Half a dozen people

wanting training as bus drivers were queueing to register for the start of the

month long course. Nigerian, Barbadian, Iraqi, Indian and English/Welsh. Black

and white and all the tints between. They had all passed the initial multi-answer

test and interviews the month before.



Red Ken. the anti-communist had just introduced congestion charging to

central London. It had immediately cut car use in the centre by 20%. and the

bus companies were on a recruitment spree to meet the increased frequency

and demand. A success story against all the cynics. Bus profits and share

prices soared. Pity about the tube.



His turn came to register. Struck senseless by beauty. Again. She was probably

40 and shining black. Not tall, 5' 3”, but had stature all the same. Elegance and

dignity exuded from her. Quick, soft brown eyes offering friendly hellos to

those who came her way. Doing her job.



Her voice flowed lanquid and clear, “Hello. Your name please.”



He would have liked to have said something witty, carrying the delight in meeting

her but no, as usual struck thinking-slow by beauty, all he could utter was,

“Good morning. Blunt". Trying to ensure his tone at least was open and friendly

and that he wasn't grinning inanely or worse, fawning.



After ticking him off her list she handed him some papers, “Take a seat. Have a

coffee and read through the papers. It will be about another thirty minutes before

the Trainers are ready and you can get started”, she said, letting a smile fly and

caress the room.



His eyes and ears were being mesmerised. “Thanks”, he responded wide eyed

with his charm smile, but she was no longer looking having ticked him off her list

and passed on along the queue to another. Ever helpful and welcoming. Doing

her job.



Regaining some equilibrium he turned to the coffee machine, a seat and the

papers she had given him.



Complete strangers till a few minutes ago, people were already talking to each

other over their coffee, eager in their optimism. They all had two things in

common - the need for work and income, and hope for the future. The

conversations centred around their initial tests and interviews and wanting the

course to go well and quickly. That they pass the driving test first time and start

earning more than the minimum wage they receive during training.



By 09.15 everybody who needed to be had been processed. A few names had not

been ticked off, had given it a miss, exercised another option or just couldn't get

out of bed. Twenty people had made it. A few women, he counted four, and

some more nations added - Kurd, Portugese, Sierra Leonean, Angolan. A Scot

had found his way here. Muslim, Christian, Hindu - devout or not. Even if not

born here were British now. Or he would like to think.



The first week would be classroom based. There were a few groans from those

eager for action, getting their hands on a steering wheel and playing with

London's traffic. “Theory has its place”, thought Blunt, and everyone needed to

learn the intricacies of the ticket machine; the company's rule book - and the

Government's; the twenty-plus different types of bus passes and travel cards; the

new Highway Code - especially rule 198.



(Rule 198. Buses, coaches and trams. Give priority to these vehicles when

you can do so safely, especially when they signal to pull away from stops. Look

out for people getting off a bus or tram and crossing the road.)



Over the next week he talked with most of his new colleagues during their breaks

and found a majority had come to escape grinding poverty or war. Even the Scot

who found his way here. The canteen table-top discussions were about the

world, and what could a table from Sudan, Palestine, Sierra Leone, DR Congo,

Britain talk about - but the world. They all naturally understood the 'world' to

mean current affairs, politics, economics, history, science, art, religion,

anything they had an interest in like their home countries. Some were studying at

night while others had degrees not recognised here.



All around the canteen could be seen tables earnestly in discussion about anything

and everything.



A table of white Londoners exchanging sharp-edged putdowns about their football

teams, Spurs, Arsenal or Palace. There was that rare breed, a QPR fan

swapping witty insults. A Wimbledon fan was deep in depression. His team had

left him. Except for the Wimbledon fan, it was all done with a smile. Canteen

banter.



At another table two women drivers were bragging lovingly about the academic

and sporting merits of their children. Competing then breaking out in giggles

remembering those same childrens occassional lack of coordination in speech

and limb.



There is even a table reserved solely for film buffs, obsessed with the minutae

and occassionally missing the wood. Their weekly discussions were highly

structured. One of the table would present an appreciation of a film, an actor, a

director, cinematographer. Then the rest would discuss. The opener would give

a two minute summing up. All done in half an hour over lunch.



A large Jamaican Conductor became famous across Londons garages for her

appreciation of the film Casablanca. She was invited to repeat it many times in

many garages. The only mention of the film was in the opening sentence and then,

for ten minutes she spoke about Ingrid Bergman, Roberto Rossellini and 'The

Rise to Power of Louis XIV'. The link was solid. Ingrid Bergman, the gentle,

principled Ilsa Lund Laszlo of Casablanca, left her husband and a Hollywood that

adored her for Roberto Rossellini, the founder of neo-realist cinema with

classics as Rome Open City and Germany Year Zero. The affair was the scandal

of its day. She left her husband for a communist right at the start of the

witchhunts in Hollywood. One McCarthite US Senator even condemned her as “a

powerful influence for evil". Ilsa?



“I've gone from saint to whore and back to saint again, all in one lifetime.” Was

the Bergman quote chosen by the Conductor.



Bergman made many films with Rossellini like Stromboli and Europa 51, critical

but not financial successes, and she gave him a son and daughter, Roberto and

Isabella. They had seperated by the time of The Rise to Power of Louis XIV



With clear exposition she teased out the central theme of The Rise to Power of

Louis XIV. Following his coronation, Louis XIV used fashion as political tool to

secure his position and dominate the court. He led the fashion and it grew more

outlandish and expensive, while the poor of France begged for bread. If you

didn't keep up no matter how odd you looked, you were out of the court.

Ridiculed and ostricised for offending the King by wearing yesterdays fashion.

Some would sell vast estates, bankrupt themselves attempting to acquire the

latest look and remain at court. They would end up being exiled to the

wilderness and the mercies of the common people. Louis got what he wanted -

a supplicant court full of foppish toadies, but his profligacy and outlandishness

helped alienate his descends Subjects, making them Citizens a hundred years

later.



How even Mao used fashion to further the Cultural Revolution.



The Conductor's finale was to posit the idea that todays fashion houses and

branded clothing carried out a similar function. The way a look reinforced class,

race and age indentification, The loyalty to a tribe on a global scale. Defining your

place by a superficial difference to others. The couture houses welding an affluent

elite behind the idea that somehow they are superior in thinking because of the

cut of their cloth. Shallow as the gloss that covers their nakedness.



“But even the president of the United States

Sometimes must have

To stand naked.”

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) Bob Dylan



For the parting shot she said, “And the people making the clothes now for Nike

or Levis or Adidas are living and working like slaves. Nothing much has seemed

to change since Louis XIV.”



When she finished she looked around the canteen. Not a fork scrapped a plate.

Her eloquence, rhythym and passion had stilled the room. Moments later it

erupted in applause. A few weren't to pleased. A Bling-Bling afficionado dripping

baubles crept from the room, embarrassed in his finery, to return the next day

having hired the DVD and cast aside the glossy veneer that had distorted his

charming personality. But most were just awed. There was no disciplined

discussion of the Conductor's ideas at the film buffs table after that. Knots of

animated bus-workers formed, making links between their favourite films and the

real world.



'It's a common misconception among the Islington dinner-party circuit to believe

that the only intelligent discussion over food is held at their cold but proper

tables. That only a refined palate can comprehend refined ideas', thought Blunt

while eating his bacon sarnie.



At Blunts table there were times when the conversation became difficult. Nasser

could not talk of the horrors he had encountered in Sudan's civil war, between

The North and The South, The Arab African and The Black African. In his gentle

hazel eyes shone warnings of where not to go. Better to keep the trap-door

shut against those personality changing times, the psycho dislocation, the madness.

Now it was 'day by day' and 'todays a new day'.



At other times it would be effusive. Jamal would talk and talk about his life if you

didn't stop him. To recite the stories he had witnessed and survived from his

home town, the ancient Canaanite city of Nablus now in occupied Palestine,

were therapy. Stories spiced with wit and bite, exposing the hypocrisy of Israel's

occupation, had people spluttering their tea. His tales an everyday re-affirmation

that he lived to tell. His daily prayer.



Blunt pondered their fate a lot. They had come with hope and expectation,

wanting to give a fair days work for a fair days pay. A principle held dear by every

working person except the lumpen white racists who cannot get past their fear of

colour. Whose world is Black&White. With white always good and right and

deserving more for it. Fundamentalists living and dying by absolutes. No point in

arguing with messianic faith. There are some amongst the bus drivers that Blunt

would met. Thick.



These trainees were the lucky ones with an opportunity for a legal job. Most

immigrants, legal or not, can only find work in the underground economy. The

cheapest of cheap labour outside all the labour rules, working in a culture of fear.

No health and safety; employed by the day; violent and larcenous gangmasters;

instant dismissal; extreme hours; more often than not under-paid, or not paid

at all when the Gangmaster demands money for rent and transport; even death

while picking cockles in Morecombe Bay. No unions, no employment laws in the

underground economy.



Blunt worked as a van courier for a while. Nothing to compare with employment

in the underground economy but nakedly expolitative all the same. All the costs

were put on the courier, hire of van and radio, cost of fuel, parking tickets.

The most he had earned in a 50hr week was £206.00 and the tax hadn't called for

their cut yet. One firm even tried to pass on parking tickets a year after he had

'fucked them off'. The tickets were dated from before he started working for

them. Absolute scum. Nothing to compare with the underground economy but

still designed to keep you poor.



These modern day migrants wanting to earn and raise families, bring new

sensibilities and new stories to their new land and help make it's history anew

thought Blunt. They will have nothing to return to. Forty years it would take on

a bus-drivers wage to save enough and return home. Relatively rich maybe. All

the old friends gone. Family unrecognisable. Envious neighbours. The climbing

tree, a hundred years tired, succumbed to a wind in a storm . Everything

changed including them. Their wintering years a mere wallow of lonely nostalgia.

Warm but lonely.



All migrants know this. Despite the constant lucid dreams of home, or the

sudden jolt of aromas bringing old memories of mothers and markets and an ache

for the past, they know this. Their children born here will call this patch of

Earth home and grand-children are hard to forsake. Nothing wrong with dreams.

They keep one's heritage alive, one's sense of belonging somewhere, one's

meaning to oneself.



Kamara was from Sierra Leone. Not as effusive as Jamal nor reticent like Nasser.

He juggled, occassionally keeping the canteen entertained with plates and cups

and chairs during his breaks. Addicted to the applause. He didn't volunteer his

story but it appeared at the discussion table when the talk turned to the looming

war in Iraq.



Pre-pubescent boys press-ganged into crack fueled 'rebels', had invaded Kamara's

town, machetes drawn, driving out those that had not already fled at the two

week old rumours.



“Out!”



More thousands joined the already flown into exile, most never to return to

Koidu, to the Kono plateau they called home. Thousands had run, dispersed into

the bush, to live on grass and berries or die there from their fear and wounds.

For the slow, the old, for nursing mothers and the young; those just reluctant

to leave their work, their livelhood; the ones who thought they could cut a deal

with invaders - even fifteen year old invaders; Armaggedon came in the guise of

children.



Babies swung by their ankles, like carpet-beaters, against white-washed walls

congealing with their brains and blood and shards of skull. The mothers gang

raped on top the mangled, still warm dead bodies of their children. Then he

glimpsed the arc of light as a machete rose descended, dismembered the now

non-mothers mothers hands. Again. And again. And again. The arc of light is

ever with him.



No child, so no need for hands to wash and caress, has a callous symmetry in the

crack addled minds of adolescent 'rebels'.



A hush fell over the table and every ear strained to catch the detail. Kamara's

voice, a lyrical baritone, was soft, gentle and soothing. Be-lying, making

hearable the horrors his story held. The shock of what they were about to learn

would only be felt later, when at home. One burst out crying in front of Match of

the Day, which frightened his woman. Another in a daze drank half a bottle of

whisky and didn't turn up the next day. Blunt got out the works of Goya and

Bruegel and nothing had changed but the century.