Raising a White Binny

By Stanley Scott

Raising a White Binny,
a novel by Stanley Scott
The novel is set in London in the sixties, a period of changing moral and sexual attitudes and before the advent of anti-discrimination laws and policies.
It tells the story of five young West Indian friends living and working in the Earls Court area :- George, a single-minded and serious young man who fulfils his ambition to marry his childhood sweet-heart and get to university to study for a Degree, and who is fascinated by the various lifestyles of his friends, Vishnu, from British Guiana, a non-practicing Hindu, who supports a proper system of arranged marriages and who, in his search for moral values, attempts to find them with the Jehovahs Witnesses, Malcolm, from a well-to-do Jamaican family, who passes his Bar finals, but stays on to get experience and Richard and Michael, who spend their spare time picking up white women, i.e. raising white binnies, with varying results.

The term binny was popularly used by young men in British Guiana to describe an attractive young woman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504936194

Book preview

Chapter I

George would always remember his first visit to Earl’s Court, London SW5.

It was in the summer of 1961 and he had attended the Soviet Union’s ‘Triumph in Space’ exhibition at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall.

He had arrived in England from Jamaica only a few weeks before and this was the first major event to fire his imagination. He got there early and spent the better part of the day looking at the spacecraft, listening to the many speeches by aviation experts, including Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit Earth, and generally savouring the atmosphere. He felt truly exhilarated by the experience and when he finally decided to leave the Exhibition Hall it was almost 6 p.m.

As it was still daylight he persuaded himself to take a stroll around the area. He walked down Warwick Road, turned left on to Old Brompton Road and proceeded to Earl’s Court Road, where he turned left again, walking leisurely all the way to Kensington High Street. The more he saw of the area, the more he became fascinated by it. He was particularly impressed by the tall, well-maintained houses, a co-existence of Victorian and Edwardian building styles, the cosmopolitan nature of the local population and its general zest and youthfulness. This was quite different from the North London district where he lived which his only sister, Florence and her family. It was Florence, knowing of his impoverished circumstances, who had taken a part-time evening job in a factory to save up the fare for him to travel to England. She had done reasonably well for herself in the five years that she had been in the U.K. She had met and married a Jamaican electrician and was now the proud mother of two boys, aged three and two. She was also in the process of buying on mortgage a three-bedroom house with her husband. Hers was the only black family in a in a white, working-class neighbourhood which had clearly seen better days. The district was home to several industrial estates and rows upon rows of run-down Victorian terraced houses, many of them appearing to have suffered from the ravishes of war. The atmosphere was frequently polluted by industrial waste, smoke and smog. The population seemed to George to be comprised largely of elderly people and a general feeling of decay and hopelessness appeared to pervade the area. In the short time that George had lived there it had become only too clear to him that it was not a place where ambitious young people like himself would choose to live. He was twenty years of age and wanted to be among people of his own age group, doing all the things young people do. In his eyes Earl’s Court seemed to offer all the opportunities he desired.

It did not, therefore, take him long to decide that he wanted to live there. He had recently found a job as a labourer in a factory on one of the industrial estates near his sister’s house and resolved to save as much of his weekly wages as he could to finance his move. Three weeks later an unexpected event occurred which precipitated his departure from North London.

At the factory where he worked he was asked by his foreman to cover for a few days for a fellow-labourer who was off sick. George agreed. This meant that he had two jobs to do. After two weeks the strain was beginning to tell on him, so he informed the foreman that he was unable to cope with the two sets of duties. To his astonishment the foreman glibly told him the company had no intention of replacing the absent worker and that they expected him to perform both tasks on a permanent basis. George objected to this ruling and was promptly sacked.

This happened on a Friday. On the following Monday he was in Earl’s Court, looking for employment as well as a room to rent. As fate would have it, after trying several establishments, including a bakery, a garment warehouse, a fast-food outlet and a hotel, he found a job as a porter at the Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall. A week later he found a room to rent in Earl’s Court Square.

* * *

It was while working at the Exhibition Hall that George met and befriended some young West-Indians who, he later felt, were the most interesting people he had come into contact with.

Among them was Richard, a twenty-six year old Trinidadian who had been living in England since 1956. Richard was a dapper, handsome man who sported a flamboyant, bushy moustache, which, on first impression, gave him a deceptively fierce appearance. He had experienced many things in London, some happy and some sad. One of the sad things he suffered after only 18 months in the country was being picked up by the police as a ‘suspected’ person receiving a three-month jail sentence. To this day Richard has continued to maintain his innocence to this offence.

George’s first meeting with Richard was not cordial. It occurred on the day that George started work. He was taken to the staff canteen by the section supervisor, Bill, to meet other members of the workforce. On being introduced to Richard, George extended his hand in friendship, only to be told by Richard that he had no time for hypocrisy.

Witnessing this incident was another porter named Vishnu, a non-practicing Hindu from British Guiana, an articulate, sensitive and self-effacing man. Between Richard and him there existed a mutual dislike.

He was embarrassed by the incident and quickly offered a consoling hand to George, simultaneously pulling a chair next to his for George to sit on as Bill walked away, red-faced.

As George sat down Vishnu whispered, He is a real bighead, thinks he’s God’s gift to women."

George was taken aback by this remark and enquired, What do you mean by that?

Vishnu replied caustically, Because he does pick up some loose white women it has gone to his head.

George, who came from a small, rural village in Jamaica, and had long been intrigued by the whole issue of black men and white women, asked keenly, Where he does meet them?

He does walk the streets and pick them up. Vishnu said dismissively, a little irritated by the turn of the conversation, but George finding the topic irresistible, prompted, Can you just do that? Supposing, they don’t want to talk.

Vishnu replied impatiently, Boy, I don’t really know anything about this sordid business. If you want all the details you can go and ask Richard. I’m quite sure he will be more than glad to tell you.

George, sensing Vishnu’s unease, decided it was time to change the subject by asking him if he lived nearby. It transpired that Vishnu lived on Nevern Square, a block away from the Exhibition Hall. The conversation turned to their lives in general. Vishnu said he had been working at the Exhibition Hall since he arrived in England, three years earlier. George got the impression that he was a highly emotional person, who either lacked the confidence to compete with other men, or the desire to do so. When George asked whether Vishnu was married he said no, and confided that, his only relationship with a woman happened almost by accident.

He had travelled to England via Trinidad in the SS Monsterrat. On the ship were two sisters, the elder of which was in the course of running away from her husband in British Guiana with her lover. Due to a remarkable coincidence, when they arrived in London the two sisters, the lover and Vishnu ended up sharing the same bed-sitting room. This occurred, because their ‘sponsors’ both lived in the same house in which a room was vacant. Up to this point there was no semblance of romantic attachment between Vishnu and the younger sister, whose name was Rhani. A week later, however, when Vishnu found a bed-sitter of his own, the elder sister, to his surprise, asked him to take Rhani with him. Both were virgins, but after two weeks of sharing the same bed they became lovers.

Thereafter he grew to like Rhani a lot and to consider her his woman. She was nineteen, petite and attractive, and he felt that with a little smoothening of some of her rough edges she could make him a good wife. Rhani, on the other hand, was not enamoured of Vishnu, but she was ambitious and wanted to become a qualified beautician. So, instead of going to look for a job, she asked Vishnu to allow her to enrol for this course of studies and he willingly agreed to pay all the fees and maintain her. During the two-year period of the course he continued to work at the Exhibition Hall, while she combined her studies with most of the domestic chores at home.

Soon after successfully completing the course and receiving her diploma Rhani suggested to Vishnu that she should go on a holiday to visit her mother in British Guiana. Vishnu consented, paid for her return ticket and gave her some spending money.

Her return date passed and Rhani did not come back to him. Vishnu wrote to her on several occasions, but did not receive a reply. Almost a year later he received a letter from her in which she apologized for overstaying and requested money for her to buy a ticket to travel to England as her original ticket had long expired. Vishnu was glad to hear from her and was very forgiving. He wasted no time in posting the money order for her return fare and waited expectantly, but as far as he was aware she had not made the trip back to England.

Vishnu was traumatized by this experience. It left him in a deep state of depression and shock. For a time, he felt lost and lonely and tried to find distraction amidst the crowds and nightclubs of London. But that failed to lift the gloom. He tried to lean on friends and acquaintances for support but soon discovered that they all had their own pressing problems to deal with and could only offer sympathy.

As time went by, he became more and more introverted as his depression increased. He philosophised a lot about human relationships, in particular those between men and women and wondered if there really was such a thing as ‘true love’. He told George that he knew the Americans, in their movies, seemed to suggest that it did exist, yet, he found it hard to understand why the Americans had the highest family breakdown rate in the world. He often asked himself whether there was any connection between this and the fact that they also had the highest crime and murder rates. George listen to Vishnu intently and was impressed by his frankness.

After talking for a while Vishnu asked George if he lived with anyone. George explained his present living arrangements, and added that he was looking for a room nearer work and that he was hoping to send for his girlfriend in Jamaica as soon as possible. He also confided in his new friend that he had two important goals in life. One was to marry the girl he had left behind in the West Indies and the other was to try and obtain a good academic qualification before returning home to get a better job. When Vishnu enquired what work he did in Jamaica, George told him he had worked as a ‘vat man’ in a rum distillery for the equivalent of 1 Pound 50 a week, ending the conversation saying laconically, If my sister didn’t send for me it would have taken years to save enough money to leave there.

George enjoyed his job as a porter. He was assigned to work in the Bar cellar with an elderly Englishman named Bob. In theory George’s main duties were to collect empty bottles and put them in cases before stacking them away. In practice his only function was to put away the cases. The reason for this reduction in his duties was due to the fact that Bob was operating an intricate system of recycling the small remnants of alcohol left in the wide range of empties, compiling separate bottles of brandy, whisky, sherry and other assorted drinks for his own consumption. As a consequence of this George soon discovered that he had more than a fair amount of time to read widely and indulge in extended conversation with the other West Indian workers.

One of these was Michael, a twenty-seven year old Jamaican. He was slim, tall and moderately good-looking. He spoke fast, with a stutter, eating up his words in the process. He had an engaging charm and dressed and looked the part of a young executive. His movements were brisk and business-like and he appeared full of confidence. He arrived for work in a suit and tie and it was only when he changed into his over-alls that he could be remotely taken for a kitchen porter.

He had arrived from Jamaica four years earlier and boasted to George, Man, in that time I have raised a ‘white binny’ and have a two year old son with she. The ‘white binny’ was Eva. She was in her early twenties, of average size and blond.

She had come to London from Finland to improve her spoken English. One day Michael spotted her in Leicester Square, looking intently at the pages of the ‘London A-Z’. To Michael this was a clear sign that she was a visitor to London. He approached her with his charming smile, offering to help her find her intended destination. Eva eyed him up for a moment before replying in a friendly way that she was looking for Covent Garden market. Michael offered to personally take her there and Eva finding him likeable and amusing, accepted the offer. This was at 3.30 in the afternoon. At 5.30 they were cosily having coffee in a Lyon’s Coffee Bar in Piccadilly Circus. In the intervening hours Michael had persuaded her that she should visit his bed-sit and listen to his records. They took the underground train in Piccadilly station and travelled to Earl’s Court, where he had a small bed-sitting room in Penywern Road. The room had a face basin, a gas ring on the floor, a single bed, a chair, a small folding table, a new ‘Dansette record-player, which he was buying through a catalogue credit agreement. It was not a home he was proud of and as he showed Eva through the door he said apologetically, It’s a little cramped. I’m hoping to move into a nice flat soon."

Eva, realizing his embarrassment, said reassuringly, It’s not bad. Rooms are hard to find in London.

Michael offered her a seat on the chair and moved to the record-player to put on a Mantovani record. Eva, who was a heavy smoker, lit a cigarette and opened the only window in the room while Michael pulled out a half-full bottle of ‘Rich Ruby’ wine and two glasses from a shelf inside the wardrobe. He carefully poured two drinks and handed Eva one. They drank and chatted for about an hour, listening to the smooth, relaxing music of the Mantovani orchestra. Then Michael jumped up from his seat on the bed, grabbed Eva by the hand and started dancing with her, holding her close and tight. After a while he whispered in her ear, Eva, darling, I want to make love to you – now!

She did not reply, but he could feel her grip on him tightening. He kissed her on the cheek and neck and she responded by offering her lips. They fell on the bed and Michael, in a state of heightened excitement, frantically started undressing Eva and himself simultaneously. They were both sexually experienced and their love-making was intensive and satisfying.

Having broken the ice, so to speak, their relationship blossomed and within a few weeks Eva was pregnant. It was not something she had wanted to happen and it caused her a great deal of worry. She wanted to have an abortion, but that cost a lot of money and involved taking serious personal and physical risk. Michael, for his part, was proud at the prospect of becoming a father for the first time and he eventually persuaded her to move in with him and have the child.

Eva had no idea of the type of work Michael did for a living. Every time she tried to discuss the matter with him he would manage to avoid the topic, but gave a clear impression that he had a good job and earned a reasonable salary. He was an ambitious and, above all, an optimistic man, who was hoping to make it big one day, although he had no definite idea about how this would happen. It had vaguely crossed his mind that he should try to start his own business, but he realized that it would take many years to raise the necessary capital. It was almost impossible for a black person to get a bank loan without collateral, even if he had a sound and viable business plan. Michael had no plan or any idea what line of business he wanted to start. He also thought long and hard about embarking on a course of study that would enable him to get some academic qualification and a good job, earning a decent standard of living.

His major concern about this idea was the fact of his conviction for forging a cheque, soon after he had arrived in England. This whole sorry episode he blamed on a friend he knew from Jamaica called Leroy, who had taken advantage of his gullibility and inexperience.

Leroy had told him that he had found an easy way to make money. He had worked out that, in an area like Earl’s Court with it’s thousands of holiday-makers living in multiple accommodation for short periods, all one had to do was follow the postman on his daily rounds and collect the mail he delivered to various addresses as many of the front doors were left unlocked. Leroy said these letters often contained Travellers’ Cheques and even cash.

Michael, who was unemployed at the time and, finding it impossible to maintain his woman-chasing life-style on the money he received from the National Assistance Board, found the scheme feasible, and on the following morning, bright and early, he and Leroy set out to track the postman as he deliver the mail. Their method was to walk some distance behind him on the opposite pavement and, as he delivered the mail, one of them would cross the road and test the front door to see if he could gain entry and collect the letters.

After following the postman for the better part of an hour and making several attempts, they succeeded in gaining entry to a house where the postman had delivered a handful of letters. They quickly made off with the loot. As they rushed off to Leroy’s room nearby, Michael was excited by the prospect of seeing the contents of these letters. On reaching their destination and opening all the letters, the spoils consisted of a ten-pound note and a Travellers’ Cheque for two hundred U.S. Dollars.

Leroy assured Michael that the haul was average for a couple of hours’ work and added firmly, The cheque must be cashed as soon as possible, before it is reported missing by the owner. He added, We have to move fast. You sign it and we will go to the Bank together. I’ll wait outside and you go in and cash it.

Michael was not happy with this arrangement, but reluctantly agreed when Leroy said persuasively, There is no danger. The worst that could happen is the cashier asking you to come back with your passport or some other form of identification.

As Michael walked into the Bank his natural confidence seemed to have deserted him. He was surprised by his nervousness as he had always believed he had the temperament to do anything, if tested. As he reached the cashier, cheque in hand, he was virtually a nervous wreck.

The cashier took the cheque from Michael’s unsteady hand and studied it for what seemed to Michael an eternity. He then looked at Michael and calmly enquired, Have you got your passport with you Mr James?

No. Michael whispered.

The cashier asked, Have you any other form of identification with you?

Michael nervously dipped his right hand in his trousers pocket in an attempt to bluff the cashier, but only succeeded in dropping his unemployment signing-on card on the