Scenes 1–3: Enid, Viv & the Obeah Woman
Enid's World
The play's opening scenes introduce Enid Matthews, a Jamaican-born mother who has built a life in London through hard work and sacrifice. She works long hours — long hours, sometimes at two jobs — to provide for her daughters, Del and Viv, and is determined that they will succeed through education and respectability. Enid has deliberately distanced herself from her Caribbean roots: she rarely speaks about Jamaica and dismisses traditional practices as backward. Pinnock presents Enid as a woman whose survival strategy is assimilation — she believes that fitting into English society is the best way to protect her daughters.
Enid's rejection of her Caribbean heritage is born from experience, not indifference. She believes that respectability and English education will protect her daughters from the racism she has experienced. But this strategy creates a painful gap between Enid and her cultural identity — and between Enid and her daughters, who sense a heritage they cannot name.
Del and Viv
Del (Delores) is the elder daughter, aged 18. She is rebellious and instinctive — she stays out late, loses her job after arguing with her manager, and is drawn to Mai and the world of Obeah. Viv (Vivienne) is the younger daughter, aged 17, and is academically focused: she is preparing for her A-level exams and plans eventually to study at university. The sisters represent two responses to the immigrant experience — Del's resistance to assimilation and Viv's apparent conformity — but Pinnock complicates both positions as the play develops.
Scene 1 takes place at Mai's Deptford bedsit. Enid brings both daughters to Mai for a reading. Her main worry is Del, who stays out late; Enid already suspects she is pregnant. She also tells Mai how hard she finds her sister Cynthia's constant requests for money from Jamaica. Enid suspects her sister may be exaggerating to extract funds, but Mai advises her to send the money anyway. Del stays behind at Mai's bedsit when Enid and Viv leave. This opening scene establishes the play's two settings and the pull that Mai's Caribbean world exerts on Del.
Mai: The Obeah Woman
Mai is a practitioner of Obeah — Caribbean folk magic rooted in West African spiritual traditions. She lives in a Deptford bedsit, physically declining but spiritually authoritative. She represents everything Enid has tried to leave behind: Jamaica, the old ways, spiritual belief systems that do not fit into English respectability. Mai's presence connects the family to their cultural roots, offering an alternative to Enid's strategy of assimilation. She recognises Del's potential as her spiritual successor from the start.
Brod (Broderick) is Enid's long-standing friend, a fellow Windrush-generation Jamaican who is present throughout key scenes — most significantly Scenes 2, 3 and 7. He is the play's only significant male character and provides a counterpoint to Enid's resilience. Brod has a serious drinking problem, has a wife and children still in Jamaica, and is deeply disenchanted with life in England. He embodies a Windrush experience that Enid has refused to allow herself: the disillusionment of a man who gave up everything for a country that never fully accepted him.
Scene 3: Enid's Mother Dies
The emotional turning point of the play's first half comes in Scene 3, when Enid learns that her mother has died in Jamaica. The news comes by telephone: Viv answers a call from Enid's sister in Jamaica, and Enid drops the phone as she listens. This is not a simple bereavement: Enid's relationship with her mother was strained. Back home in Jamaica they called her 'Miss English', mocking her assimilation. Enid sent money home but kept her distance — both geographically and emotionally. The death therefore carries grief compounded by guilt, estrangement and the knowledge that the relationship can never now be repaired.
Enid's emotional collapse after her mother's death in Scene 3 is the play's first major crisis. It cracks open the composure she has maintained through assimilation. Her grief is not simply about her mother's death — it is about everything she left behind in Jamaica: her roots, her language, the life she might have had. Pinnock uses this bereavement to humanise Enid and to begin the process by which she is gradually forced to reconnect with what she suppressed.