The Fallen~Sparrow~Hawk; Strange Fruit

Strange fruit,  April, 14, 2002

Since a few weeks ago the gorse bushes have blossomed everywhere. Farmers are ploughing their fields accompanied by cawing crows or screeching gulls. Smoke continues to billow up from the horizon as heather is burned and, of course, we are blessed with gorgeous sunlight and crimson sunsets. Buds are slowly opening on the trees and I have been on seed watering duty since Jenny, Alison et al went away. Most are grown indoors until the shoots are ready to be planted in the garden. I am amazed at how quickly they are sprouting. The geese are not as vociferous as they were a month ago, thank God. The wind generator turns on the odd days now but there is still ample voltage from the batteries; same with rainwater which occasionally fills the jerry cans.

Maddy and Tristan left with their twelve-day old baby. I felt a little sad, if not bitter, to see a couple arrive make manifest their love through a child. It made me want to speak to someone close and I chose Mark.

The first conversation was one-upmanship and I had to call him again and have a proper conversation in which he said I could call him any time. We sound in love. I do want to see him, to hold him and be close to someone. I was lamenting how difficult I can be in relationships and wondered whether I was in self-imposed exile here from my emotions, which is probably partially the case. I can be a cold-fish sometimes and must endeavour to say what’s on my mind and especially what’s in my heart.

For some reason I have been very tired of late, sleeping a lot.

I thought of the sentence, ‘I am the only black face at the cattle market’, to start my new book, Strange Fruit. I think it will be about a twin, one of which is murdered and leads the other to investigate. I will transpose the story of the black brothers I heard about in glen Colmcil, in Donegal to Galloway. There will be a birth of a mixed-race child and one of the twins will be blamed for it and lynched. The other brother will stay on his friends remote farm (low-impact community) and, from there, discovers the child’s birth; the real father being a throwback to an 18^th century slave. The death is only discovered after the Whithorn digs reveals DNA evidence linking the child to the body, that of Jolly. A great opening image, harrowing because true, white men, dress in costume indistinguishable from the eighteenth century and today, chasing a young black man through woods across a stream; this links  the plight of Jolly with, well, Stephan Lawrence and our twin. Lynching still goes on all over the UK, very subtle; no need for a tree and rope. For reasons of internalized self-hate Britain’s gays are practitioners of it in its verbal, and sexually inverted racist form. Sleep-with-them (Blacks and Latinos) but don’t bring ‘em home; they seem to labouring under the grandiose delusion that fascists won’t come for them too. I once asked a very successful black gay social worker about the phenomena of inverted racism, and he said he always quickly establishes in the initial conversation whether the interested Caucasian has any black people in his/her dinner/party set. “If there are none, you’ll never be invited in darling, as they see it, they are racially slumming it”; There are many ways to lynch a black man and the Brits might well be pass-masters at it and especially if the white man perceives that the black man may be in anyway on a par or passing him, a better job, clothes, car, girlfriend, house, education, accent; this sends his entitled gyroscope reeling; it was ever thus. The black man, in the Southern states of America, could, on the turn of a pin, be perceived as ‘Uppity’ and on the gossamer fragility of a white’s insecurity, and be strung up from a tree.

The gold inscription below the painting of Jolly and Sir William Maxwell was probably added later. Even so, once again I can’t help thinking; it is a bazaar choice of pose to have his servant stand in the background with the instrument of his death in his hand. Sir William Maxwell does look very effeminate.

Re. burial. It is unknown where Jolly lies. The Maxwell cemetery is outside the town of Monreith, Meades or something. They have discovered a girl’s grave under a fallen tree but there is another unidentified grave somewhere.

When Tristan drove me into Newton Stewart, I swear, after exiting the petrol garage, I saw two young men walking  toward us on the open road ahead, the same two wild men Nick and I had met at the entrance to the forest a year ago, but I don’t remember passing them or them turning off anywhere. I remember looking behind for them. No where!?

There are ghosts at Monreith House. One is a maid and there is, reportedly, another man. It is rumoured that Jolly’s ghost haunted the castle, but it is mainly a rumour...

I have yet to meet a member of the Jolly family. Hopefully Richard from Belfast will give me an intro. Richard told me that Jean Jean told him that Jolly’s grandchildren did all they could to erase the parish records of their grandparent’s marriage, and their own birth certificates to hide their negro origins.