Jodhpurs, Tweeds and Monocles

(for Johnny Powell)

You get clobbered by the past
If you’re not careful. Up to your neck
In its scratchy worsted –
The clothes of dead people.

See us
Ghosting the line of Brixton’s UB40 queues,
Black and dandy
In our Harris tweeds –
Always a button missing,
Some curious stain on the cuff
Or torn-off name tag that turns up in a pocket.

Be who you want to be –
Lord Sew-and-Sew signing on
With his afro comb
Stuck up in a breast pocket,
Lady Windswept’s chequered scarf
In black-white dogtooth
Flagging down supervisors –
Stylishly loud,
Cussing late payment.

Jodhpurs, tweeds and monocles
Are all the rage,
Now no one’s on a wage
And Britain isn’t working.

Thrift gives you
Something else to do –
Weekend rich,
Weekdays mend and making do.

You wonder how they did it
Back in the war –
Cinch that waist
(And breathe),
Stitch that rip in the blue silk cummerbund,
Patch the elbow so it fits
Or stretch to a cup of water
With the seam sewn so tight.

What made that shoulder worn,
Or that tear there
Where you’ve caught it again on a latch?
And what happened
To that missing/matching piece of material
You keep shrugging off
Until you notice yourself
Keeping an eye out on the stalls
– In charity shops and jumble sales –
In case they come back
Out of pity for your loss,
Soft with the patience of invisible menders,
To put you in full possession
Of… what?
An inheritance?
A pattern of life
For which you’re not cut out?
A possibility of being here
As they were – demobbed,
Bankrupt, post-war, happy
To have survived
On corned-beef, bomb-damage,
Round about a pound a week?

Still worrying
Those darned edges,
Hems fraying on the summer dresses,
Austere and threadbare
In their winter coats,
We go out of our way
To make their oddments ours –
Snow falling
On worn collars and cufflinks,
Necklaces and silk laddered stockings,
Stepping out in the rain
With holes in our shoes
And cardboard patches,
With names like theirs
But not the faces,
Sun black, high brown, tan, yellow foreign faces…
The decades decaying in spats and stays,
Sudden changes of fashion,
We made that alteration
In the weathered fabric of our lives –
Never mind who died,
Whose hair had that parting
Or waved in that plait over plaid
When the planes passed over
And hope faded
Of ever finding them again,
The skirts and suits
Having seen better days
And everything after
Somehow shop-soiled or grubby
For being mothballed.

Life has to stop somewhere,
Or be handed on.
Who else wants
The whole dusty haberdasher’s emporium
Of the past – its zips and spares,
Silks and synthetics,
Cut price displays of vintage scarves,
Feral stoles, old school ties –
The heaped-up heartbreak
Of headless,
Armless dressmaker’s dummies,
Assemblages
Of dismantled days
No one wants cluttering the shop?

We took what was offered
And made it ours,
Loosened its limbs and danced
In crepe soles and Edwardian velvet,
Blue suede and floral blouses –
A sunlight resurrection
Of so much vanished life,
Summer smiles
And the loose swaying gait
Of the girls,
Moonlit rendezvous
Under imagined palms
Of Panamas, trilbies and fedoras,
Our locks and afros spilling out like fronds.

We married being here
With being gone,
Being English and black
In our Crombie coats and jackets,
Second-hand but stylish and original –
Laughing in that way Johnny always laughed,
Private, reserved and pleasant
With the police,
Placing the glint of ‘Good evening’ in his voice,
A chuckle of class into ‘How can I help you?’
While flashing me a grin
Full of crazy teeth
And bursting with how unbelievable
He found it.

Gabriel Gbadamosi

Gabriel Gbadamosi is a poet, playwright, essayist and critic.