Sol Campbell Page 2
Wilhelmina had forged a good life in England. She had convinced herself that her work was worthwhile. She was dedicated to it, to her home and to her children. She didn’t have much time to herself and she had little communication with her husband. They probably didn’t realise that the years were passing them by, or certainly the days. When she came back from work, he was going out. She wasn’t even bothered that he was spending more and more time out at the pub. She just got on with it. Their house in East Road was orderly and well-run. Yes it was short on space, but they could manage; everything was just fine, until one day her peace was shattered by the voice of a doctor.
Wilhelmina was pregnant again. This would be her twelfth child. Her GP advised her it wouldn’t be wise to have another. He suggested she terminate the pregnancy. ‘You are forty-one years old,’ he said. ‘You have had many children and this pregnancy could seriously affect your health. I don’t think you have the strength left in you, and even if you managed to have the child there could be complications.’
She left the surgery confused and angry, finding it difficult to digest what had been said. Have an abortion? I can’t do that. She carried the weight of the doctor’s words with her for days. She told no-one. There was nobody to tell. She certainly couldn’t discuss it with her husband and there was nobody at work she felt at ease with to seek advice. She started to imagine the worst. What if it made her so sick she was unable to look after her living children? What if she died? What if what he said was true, and her twelfth child was born with problems?
On the Sunday, when she was in the launderette in Canning Town, she couldn’t keep the doctor’s conversation secret any longer. She needed to talk to someone and she opened up to a white woman in her seventies who worked there. She never understood why. She didn’t normally talk to strangers about her life. She explained what the doctor had said, what she had been advised to do: to have an abortion. The woman came to sit next to Wilhelmina. She put her hands on hers. She squeezed them tight. ‘You listen to me,’ she said. ‘I had twins when I was forty-five years old and they are the tallest, strongest lads you are ever likely to see, and you can see I still have my health. Pay no attention to what has been said. You have that child my dear, and God bless him.’
Wilhelmina was filled with warm relief, like hearing the voice of a comforting friend. It was what she needed. ‘I will have the child,’ she said, a hundred times if she said it once. She smiled and thanked the woman. ‘I will never forget you. Never.’
The following day, she returned to her doctor and told him she was going to have her twelfth child and she never wanted to discuss the termination ever again. ‘We shall let God decide,’ she said pointedly.
• • •
Sol was born on 18 September 1974. On that Wednesday, it was one of those freak Indian summer days without a breath of wind, when the stifling weather took Londoners by surprise.
Wilhelmina was admitted to Newham General Hospital the night before at 11pm. Sewell was at work so she called for an ambulance. It was not going to be the easiest of births. There were times she thought about what the doctor had said but her faith was strong. She had no doubt that she and the baby would be safe. She would have a caesarian the following morning.
Sewell arrived at the hospital from work. Mother and baby were doing fine. The birth could all have been so much better. But as Wilhelmina held the baby in her arms, she knew it could have been far worse. Sewell would never know how she had given all her strength just to survive the full term of pregnancy.
‘My mother is a remarkable woman,’ says Sol. ‘She brought up all these children and maintained a good standard of living. She raised us on a different level of comfort than most in the neighbourhood and has always been there. She has always made me feel safe.’
Mother and child returned home after nine days. He was christened at the local Baptist church three months later. ‘I remember he cried a lot,’ says Wilhelmina. ‘His brothers were christened when they were older. Peter wasn’t christened until he was
five years old and I promised myself, if I had another child, I wouldn’t wait so long. It depressed me not having them christened early on in their life. I thought once they were christened they would be protected, and it was proved I wasn’t wrong.’
• • •
Wilhelmina is in the kitchen preparing food. She’s alone in the house apart from Sol, now four months old, upstairs in his cot. Everything is quiet. Nothing appears out of the ordinary until she looks down and sees the black and white cat staring straight at her. She bends down. ‘What are you doing? Go on outside.’ She shoos it away and opens the back door but it won’t move. ‘Go on!’ But again it won’t move. All it does is utter a ‘miaow’, not in a sentimental way but in a way she hadn’t heard before. Then silence. And suddenly the cat dashes in the opposite direction to the bottom of the stairs. She can’t ignore it, so Wilhelmina starts to follow. She is drawn upstairs to her room. The cat goes up to the cot, which is next to Wilhelmina’s bed. The baby has a nappy covering his head and tied tightly around his neck; his feet are kicking hysterically for freedom, for breath. She rips the nappy off. For an instant, Sol’s face is an unrecognisable colour. She lifts him up and takes him into her arms. A breathless hush. Her little boy could have suffocated. He is safe now. He has an angel on his back, she thinks; he will always be safe. She strokes the cat. Our youngest has been sent by divine providence. As it purrs, Wilhelmina is convinced she sees the cat’s lips open and close in a half-smile.
• • •
Sol was strong, even in those early days. ‘He was a good baby, quiet,’ says Wilhelmina. ‘By the time he was nine months old, he was already climbing on his own into his cot. All the children were strong. Sol walked at nine months. The twins walked at seven. We never had weak kids. Maybe because us parents were both strong.’
He learnt at a very early age to be independent and to occupy himself, with his mother out at work until the early afternoon, his father fast asleep upstairs after his night’s shift. He remembers he irritated his siblings; fidgety, longing to move out into the fresh air, making sounds that drew attention to himself. But the rest were too busy getting on with their lives to be bothered by the newest member of the family.
Alone, he would stare at the television and be transfixed by the ever-changing shapes and angles and the multitudinous colours. Sometimes his father would walk in, turn over the channel, sink into his chair, take one look at young Sulzeer, mumble something or other, light his roll-up cigarette and gaze at the screen. Sol would shuffle his feet, stammer in silence. Stand back. Sit back. Stand up and walk to the window and see if mum was coming down the street. Sit back. Try to talk to Dad. No answer. Then a brother would come in, say something to Dad. Sol would be left out and leave the room to entertain himself with a used tennis ball or football in the garden… Alone again with his thoughts.
‘I’ve since tried to remember where my dad was coming from. He would say, this is my house, and what I say goes. A few times I got punched but as I was the youngest, my brothers felt more force. Sometimes there has to be discipline if you do something completely wrong. You’ve got to learn. I understood it. I got a belt when I probably deserved it. I know it helped me,’ he says, then pauses and gives a slight nod as if reassuring himself that what he’s just said makes sense not to the listener but to himself.
• • •
It’s early afternoon. All he can see from the front window of the house as he waits for his mother to return from work are children, playing directly opposite outside the community hall. Sol spends hours spying on them. As he watches, he plays peek-a-boo. The curtains are drawn and when the kids notice Sol’s face peeking through, they half-wave and gesticulate. Sol immediately ducks and pretends not to be there. This game amuses him for hours. He laughs to himself at the enjoyment. Not such a lonely place after all, is it? No – when, suddenly, he stands up with a jolt. The thud of the front door shatters the silence and his concentrat
ion. His mother is back. He runs into his mother’s arms, hugging her tightly as she is trying to take off her coat. I’m safe now. Mum’s home. He follows her into the kitchen.
The front room was cleanliness itself, spruced up ready for an occasion, with dark heavy furniture, a television, sofa and the most importantly-placed armchair. There was the ever-present smell of cooking in a house that rarely opened its windows, but it was kept as tidy as best you can imagine for a large family whose mother was out at work all day.
What Sol loved about the sanctuary of his front room was its peace. It was the best room in the house and had to be treated with respect, like a place of worship. ‘It was so silent,’ Sol remembers. ‘I would sit in there when I came back from school, all alone while no-one else was in the house. The calm made me happy. Since then, I’ve always been in search of it.’
Then, the house would become a noise again. Everyone returning from school, from work. They would pile into the kitchen and start to cook or switch on the television. The various roars drowned out any peace and quiet, so Sol would creep out of the house and head to the sanctuary of the street; his tranquility.
He would say little in the house. His silence would shadow him throughout his life and make anyone who met him feel at times uneasy, even suspicious. But, like in a great novel where there is another text being written in invisible ink between the printed lines, his other story was as full as the one he was living.
‘As I was the last one, I was kind of adrift. I was the youngest by five years,’ Sol says. ‘When you’re growing up you’re none the wiser, but it’s not rocket science and no surprise I spent most of my time outside, away from the others. I wanted to be in the streets or in the park. I always wanted to be out of the house.’
He was a gentle boy who, although very shy, made friends. ‘Sulzeer, as he was known then, would always be respectful when he came into the shop,’ says newsagent Bill. ‘I remember him buying fizzy sweets and saying thank you when he left. He also kept a watch on his friends. He would scold them if they behaved badly. He was a leader among his group. His friends would listen to him. It’s my most vivid memory, of how they would react when he spoke. He gained the respect of his contemporaries with his calm, respectful behaviour.’
Sol’s first real memory of his childhood was a day at his nursery in Upton Lane. Before he left the house, his mother was taking extra care that her four-year-old Sulzeer was looking his best, his smartest. ‘It’s a special day today,’ she said. He remembers the day clearly, as if the house was transfused with a new energy. Police cars were parked outside the nursery, exciting for any child, probably more exciting than anything that was about to happen. A lot of people were craning their necks to get a better view. I’m not sure what’s happening, thought Sulzeer, but there is great excitement and I like it. His mother says her goodbye; she needs to get to work. Sulzeer is led into the classroom and his teacher tells everyone to be quiet. ‘We have a special guest today,’ she says. He remembers she then paused or maybe he has added the pause to his memory. ‘Lady Diana Spencer.’
The children were told to line up. Perhaps they were told all this the day before, but the young mind doesn’t remember time like that. They remember the moments.
The countdown is on. The teacher tells the children to get ready. She’s on her way. The door opens and the effortless beauty of a future princess walks into their classroom surrounded by admirers. Children giggle nervously. Not Sulzeer. He is standing to attention, upright. He knows how to behave; his parents have taught him that. She stops and talks to a boy, or was it to a girl, just in front? Or was it both? He thinks she smiled at him but he may be wrong, it may just be his imagination. But her presence made the day very special. After she left the building, they decided to record the day by taking photographs. A teacher brings out a box filled with an assortment of toys. ‘Go on Sulzeer, choose something.’ Sol pulls out an object he is most comfortable with. Snap goes the photograph. ‘We’ll make sure your parents get a copy,’ the photographer says. He still has that photograph today. It is of a four-year-old Sulzeer proudly holding up a red and blue football.
• • •
Sol’s early education took place no more than a couple of miles from his front door. After nursery, he went to Portway Infants, five hundred metres from his home, followed by Portway Juniors and then onto Lister Community School.
At Portway he would always choose the desk closest to the door. A psychologist would deduce an urge to leave the classroom as soon as the bell goes, but that would not be true in Sol’s case. He wanted to stay and wanted to learn. But he found in class, he had so much time in which to sit and think. ‘Sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit.’ The class would have up to forty kids and he found himself lost in the numbers. Quiet and shy, he could not be heard. ‘The sad thing is, I didn’t really learn anything in those years. You suffer. You go to school each day but take away very little. I didn’t start to be properly educated until I was fourteen, when I moved up north. My grades would have been much better if someone had taken the time to recognise I had the chance to improve, but I understand it’s difficult in classes of that size.’
He remembers the swimming lessons: forty kids splashing about, testing the mood of the instructor. Sulzeer would walk away from the pool frustrated that he couldn’t improve his swimming. His friends couldn’t understand. ‘We’re here to have fun, aren’t we?’ they’d say. Sulzeer wouldn’t answer back but inside he was saying, ‘No. We’re here to get better.’ He was just eight years old but already getting to an age when he wanted to challenge himself further, push himself harder. With everything he did, he wanted to be better than he was before. Not necessarily to be the best but to improve. Shy and quiet, sport became his language of communication. ‘He was the best sportsman. Not only in football. He could jump the furthest, leap the highest,’ remembers his childhood friend, Jermaine ‘Winston’ Barclay. ‘He was never the type to say look at me.’ Yet, on the sports field he found he was doing it without trying. He had found his deliverance.
The boys used to play a game called ‘Wembley’ where they would individually take each other on, one goal, one keeper, and the first to score went through into the next round. The eight-year-old Sulzeer was drawn against an eleven-year-old, Robert Bragg, considered one of the best players in the school. ‘I did a few moves that surprised him. In the end I scored and went through,’ Sol smiles at the memory. ‘Strange, I remember thinking, that was good. Did I really beat him? I didn’t think much more of that moment at the time, but now when I reflect back on those days, I realise I had a talent, which was budding. It was just, for a long time, no-one in authority told me I was any good. I just got on with it, enjoying my sport and being picked for the school teams.’
There was no talking about dreams when he was a child. They remained hidden. They were his secrets and weren’t to be shared. His first memory was of the need to escape.
Self-respect is a required commodity, as is space, both of which Sol went in search of as early as he can remember. In a school yard game of football, an eleven-year-old bully who had been gunning for Sulzeer charged into him, so viciously he fell and banged his head against a low wall. The bully had taken aim at him because of a run-in with older brother John. Better to go for the younger brother, he must have thought. And he did. Sulzeer was hurt. ‘But I shall never forget Sulzeer’s reaction,’ remembers his friend Jermaine. ‘He got up, never said a word and walked away. You couldn’t tell how he was feeling. It showed maturity way beyond his years. He’s always been like that.’
• • •
On the way back home from Portway, Sol would make a detour. He’d hurry past his front door and cross the main road to West Ham Park. He’d head to the tennis courts in search of any lost tennis balls; the volley struck with gusto that finds itself flying off towards Canary Wharf instead of hitting the baseline. There were quite a few to choose from. He would pick the best one and play against the wall
in his street. He would practise every day and every night, learning to become the master, not the servant, of the ball. Like the young boy who locks himself away in his bedroom practicing the chords on his guitar again and again and getting better without noticing it, Sol would have the same dedication, staying outside, not going back into his house until he was called for. Enjoying his solitude, he would relish his practice. Hitting the ball against the wall with his left and right foot again and again, concentrating, keeping focused. Sol: ‘You don’t learn how to shoot but it helps your eye coordination; watching, trapping, passing with a used tennis ball.’