Amma passes the young busker
she smiles with encouragement at the girl, who responds in kind
she fishes out a few coins, places them in the violin case
she isn’t ready to forgo cigarettes so leans on the riverside wall and lights one, hates herself for it
the adverts told her generation it would make them appear grown-up, glamorous, powerful, clever, desirable and above all, cool
no one told them it would actually make them dead
she looks out at the river as she feels the warm smoke travel down her oesophagus soothing her nerves while trying to combat the adrenaline rush of the caffeine
forty years of first nights and she’s still bricking it
what if she’s slated by the critics? dismissed with a consensus of one-star reviews, what was the great National thinking allowing this rubbishy impostor into the building?
of course she knows she’s not an impostor, she’s written fifteen plays and directed over forty, and as a critic once wrote, Amma Bonsu is a safe pair of hands who’s known to pull off risks
what if the preview audiences who gave standing ovations were just being kind?
oh shut up, Amma, you’re a veteran battle-axe, remember?
look
she’s got a fantastic cast: six older actresses (seen-it-all vets), six mid-careerists (survivors-so-far) and three fresh faces (naïve hopefuls), one of whom, the talented Simone, will wander in bleary-eyed to rehearsals, having forgotten to unplug the iron, turn off the stove or close her bedroom window and will waste precious rehearsal time phoning her flatmates in a panic
a couple of months ago she’d have sold her grandmother into slavery to get this job, now she’s a spoilt little prima donna who ordered her director to pop out and fetch her a caramel latte a couple of weeks ago when it was just the two of them in a rehearsal room
I’m so exhausted, Simone whinged, implying it was all Amma’s fault for making her work so hard
needless to say, she dealt with Little Miss Simone Stevenson in the moment
Little Miss Stevenson – who thinks that because she’s landed at the National straight out of drama school, she’s one step away from conquering Hollywood
she’ll find out
soon enough
at times like these Amma misses Dominique, who long ago absconded to America
they should be sharing her breakthrough career moment together
they met in the eighties at an audition for a feature film set in a women’s prison (what else?)
both were disillusioned at being put up for parts such as a slave, servant, prostitute, nanny or crim
and still not getting the job
they railed against their lot in a grotty Soho caff while devouring fried egg and bacon slathered between two slabs of soggy white bread washed down with builder’s tea alongside the sex workers who plied their trade on the streets outside
long before Soho became a trendy gay colony
look at me? Dominique said, and Amma did, there was nothing subservient, maternal or criminal about her
she was über-cool, totally gorgeous, taller than most women, thinner than most women, with cut-glass cheekbones and smoky eyes with thick black lashes that literally cast a shadow on her face
she wore leathers, kept her hair short except for a black fringe swept to one side, and rode about town on a battered old butcher’s bike chained up outside
can’t they see I’m a living goddess? Dominique shouted with a flamboyant gesture, flicking her fringe, adopting a sultry pose as heads turned
Amma was shorter, with African hips and thighs
perfect slave girl material one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation
whereupon she walked right back out again
in turn a casting director told Dominique she was wasting his time when she turned up for a Victorian drama when there weren’t any black people in Britain then
she said there were, called him ignorant before also leaving the room
and in her case, slamming the door
Amma realized she’d found a kindred spirit in Dominique who would kick arse with her
and they’d both be pretty unemployable once news got around
they went on to a local pub where the conversation continued and wine flowed
Dominique was born in the St Pauls area of Bristol to an Afro-Guyanese mother, Cecilia, who tracked her lineage back to slavery, and an Indo-Guyanese father, Wintley, whose ancestors were indentured labourers from Calcutta
the oldest of ten children who all looked more black than Asian and identified as such, especially as their father could relate to the Afro-Caribbean people he’d grown up with, but not to Indians fresh over from India
Dominique guessed her own sexual preferences from puberty, wisely kept them to herself, unsure how her friends or family would react, not wanting to be a social outcast
she tried boys a couple of times
they enjoyed it
she endured it
aged sixteen, aspiring to become an actress, she headed for London where people proudly proclaimed their outsider identities on badges
she slept rough under the Embankment arches and in shop doorways along the Strand, was interviewed by a black housing association where she lied and cried about escaping a father who’d beaten her
the Jamaican housing officer wasn’t impressed, so you got beats, is it?
Dominique escalated her complaint to one of paternal sexual abuse, was given an emergency room in a hostel; eighteen months later, after tearful weekly calls to the housing office, she landed a one-bedroom housing association flat in a small fifties block in Bloomsbury
I did what I had to find a home, she told Amma, not my finest moment, I admit, still, no harm done, as my father will never know
she went on a mission to educate herself in black history, culture, politics, feminism, discovered London’s alternative bookshops
she walked into Sisterwrite in Islington where every single author of every single book was female and browsed for hours; she couldn’t afford to buy anything, and read the whole of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology in weekly instalments, standing up, as well as anything by Audre Lorde she could get her hands on
the booksellers didn’t seem to mind
when I was accepted into a very orthodox drama school, I was already politicized and challenged them on everything, Amma
the only person of colour in the whole school
she demanded to know why the male parts in Shakespeare couldn’t be played by women and don’t even get me started on cross-racial casting, she shouted at the course director while everyone else, including the female students, stayed silent
I realized I was on my own
the next day I was taken aside by the school principal
you’re here to become an actor not a politician
you’ll be asked to leave if you keep causing trouble
you have been warned, Dominique
tell me about it, Amma replied, shut up or get out, right?
as for me, I get my fighting spirit from my dad, Kwabena, who was a journalist campaigning for Independence in Ghana
until he heard he was going to be arrested for sedition, legged it over here, ended up working on the railways where he met Mum at London Bridge station
he was a ticket collector, she worked in the offices above the concourse
he made sure to be the one to take her ticket, she made sure to be the last person to leave the train so she could exchange a few words with him
Mum, Helen, is half-caste, born in 1935 in Scotland
her father was a Nigerian student who vanished as soon as he finished his studies at the University of Aberdeen
he never said goodbye
years later her mother discovered he’d gone back to his wife and children in Nigeria
she didn’t even know he had a wife and children
Mum wasn’t the only half-caste in Aberdeen in the thirties and forties but she was rare enough to be made to feel it
she left school early, went to secretarial college, headed down to London, just as it was being populated by African men who’d come to study or work