Small Island

by Andrea Levy

  I sat down again to ask quietly, ‘England?’

  ‘Of course England,’ she said, as if he had not travelled an ocean but just walked into town. ‘Michael has been planning to go to England from a long time ago.’

  ‘When did he go to England?’

  ‘This morning – if it is any business of yours.’

  ‘He did not tell me.’

  ‘You think he tells you everything? It should be obvious that my son does not tell you all his business. He is a man.’ She went on: ‘He has gone to England with the purpose of joining the Royal Air Force.’ I could do nothing but watch her lips as they formed words that made no sense to me. ‘They need men like my son. Men of courage and good breeding. There is to be a war over there. The Mother Country is calling men like my son to be heroes whose families will be proud of them.’

  ‘But for how long has he gone?’

  Again, she lifted the empty fork to her mouth, then realising I could see she was eating no food she laid the fork down and dabbed at her cheeks with a napkin. But she gave me no answer.

  I heard the gentle drip, drip, on to my plate before I felt the tears on my cheeks. Was my last view of Michael Roberts to have been that shadow on a wall? Or the snatched flashlight picture in the newspaper? Michael was gone? No matter how hard I dug my fingernails into my hand this time I could not stop myself from weeping.

  Four

  Hortense

  I never knew that electric light could be used so extravagantly. At home just one bulb came and went with the whim of the weather. One single bulb that attracted every buzzing, flying, irritating insect from the district to flutter mesmerised in its timid glow (and also Eugene, a feeble-minded man who would trek miles from the fields in his bare feet to stand gaping in our yard until the light was turned on). The two-storey college building was illuminated by lamps that could have made a blind man cover his eyes. Cars attracted by the brightness arrived at the gates bringing pretty-dressed girls who also buzzed around in the light, giggling and chattering and hugging up old friends.

  I was tired and hungry from my journey in the Daily Gleaner van. I had sat on what looked to me to be an upturned bucket. Eustace White, the driver, had somehow attached this implement to the floor for his passengers to sit on. All feeling was lost from both my buttock cheeks before the wretched van had even left Savannah-La-Mar. When I complained of the paralysis in my hind region, Eustace White informed me bluntly that he was not meant to take passengers in the newspaper’s van and only did so to supplement his income so he might have money to pay for the treatment of his mother’s eye complaint. Going on to explain the past, present and future of this eye condition in unnecessary detail for the rest of the long journey. By the time we arrived in Kingston my eternity had been lived listening to this man – I was convinced I had had no other life than that which took place on the upturned bucket in the Daily Gleaner van. The winding path from the road to the college grounds bumped and jiggled me for an infinity before leading us out into that floodlit fairyland that glowed before my eyes like salvation.

  Mr Philip and Miss Ma had taken no more notice of my leaving the homestead than if I were a piece of their livestock whose time had come to be sent for slaughter. Had they forgotten that my father was Lovell Roberts? A man whose picture had been pinned to parish walls. Their cousin who, somewhere, was still a man of honour, still noble in a way that made him a legend. Those diligent years of my upbringing – feeding me with the food from their plates, dressing me in frocks made of cotton and lace, teaching me English manners and Christian discipline – were they to mean no more than the fattening of a chicken on best coconut, which, after they had feasted on its carcass, stripping it of all goodness, they threw out as waste? And their son, Michael, could have been anywhere on God’s earth: flying across the English Channel, sipping coffee in a Paris café, taking tea in London. The only place I could be sure he was not was at that joyless home, where the tamarind tree, the henhouse and the dusty walk from town were the only things that ever spoke softly to me of missing him.

  It was Miss Jewel alone who waved me off when I departed for the teacher-training college in Kingston, standing in her best blouse, her legs bowed so that the hem of her skirt nearly touched the floor. As the van collected me, crunching along the stones of the path as always, she handed me a tiny parcel.

  ‘A likkle spell?’ I asked.

  The parcel contained one well folded pound note and two shiny shillings tied in a white handkerchief that had been stitched, unevenly, with my initials in blue and red. ‘You nah need a likkle spell, me sprigadee. De Lawd haffe tek care a yuh,’ was all she said.

  Like butterflies, we new girls dazzled in our white gloves, our pastel frocks, our pretty hats. Girls from good homes from all across the island. Girls who possessed the required knowledge of long division, quadratic equations. Girls who could parse a sentence, subject, object, nominative, and name five verbs of manner. Girls who could recite the capital cities of the world and all the books of the Bible in the perfect English diction spoken by the King. We new girls were to be cultivated into teachers and only after three years of residential study would we be ready for release into the schools of Jamaica.

  The hall in which we waited on that first evening was loud with the silence of fear. Fidgeting was kept to a minimum, only necessary when someone needed to straighten the hem of their garment to prevent it creasing or wipe away a tear of sweat that had developed with the heat. Only one girl coughed.

  Outside this room there was great commotion – the older pupils going about their business as raucous and shrill as parrots on a branch. Until, in one instant, it stopped as if, suddenly, all the parrots had expired or taken flight. The principal was making her entrance, parting girls to her left, to her right, like Moses through the Red Sea. She was tall and broad with a top lip that carried such a profusion of dark hair that the impression she gave was of a man in an all-too-inadequate disguise. She walked with dainty yet lumbering steps – full of feminine grace that nevertheless shook the floor beneath us. And following on behind in the gap that her ample gait created were five teachers. In the shadow of this colossal woman those attendants looked as flimsy and puny as leaves blown in by the wind. The teachers mounted the stage and faced we new girls. They were all white women but their complexions ranged – as white people’s tend to do – through varying shades of pink depending on how long they had been on the island. The principal carried a seasoned ruddy glow on her cheeks while others bore the blotchy roaring-red of newcomers.

  A smile should light up a face so that a person might seem friendly and kindly disposed to those they are smiling at. Unfortunately the principal, Miss Morgan, had a smile that was so unfamiliar to her face that it had an opposite effect – rather like the leer of a church gargoyle, it made her look sinister. She first smiled after the words, ‘Welcome, girls, to our teacher-training school. You have a hard yet stimulating three years of study ahead. If each of you attends to your work with diligence and courage I am sure you will get on well with us here.’ Her voice rang with a soft, gentle lilt as if soon to break into song, yet her smile made me recoil. But it was during her second grin, after the register of names had been taken by her bashful deputy, that I made the contrary vow never to do anything that would cause her to smile on me directly.

  Miss Morgan was not an Englishwoman as the other teachers were, her country of origin was Wales – a corner in Britain famous for its coal, its capital city Cardiff, and for being where clouds tip excess rain before moving on to the pastures of England. While the five teachers seated themselves delicately upon the chairs provided on the stage, the principal paced stately to the piano and lowered her substantial backside on to the shaky stool. For a brief moment she paused as if in prayer – her hands splayed chord-shaped over the keys – before we new girls were ordered, by some imperceptible yet demanding movement of her eyebrow, to stand. She began to play, thumping out the chords to the hymn ‘Immortal, Invisible, G
od Only Wise’. While thrashing and beating the instrument into a tune, her hair, which had sat as neat as if cast in resin, gradually began to give up one lock. The rogue hair shook looser with every note until the passion of her playing let it fall free over her forehead. ‘Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days’. With one mighty voice we new girls sang along, fired by the emotion of her performance and the vigorous quivering of the fallen lock. ‘Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise’.

  Michael was holding his closed hand out to me. This fully grown man with stubble hair piercing the skin of his chin was grinning on me as a schoolboy would. Opening his hand he revealed, resting in his palm, an ink-black scorpion, its tail erect and curled. I wanted to warn him of the danger of its murderous sting, but no words would come. I moved to strike the insect from his palm but my arm was being pulled away. Someone had my wrist clasped in their hand as tight as vine round a tree.

  I had never had such a rude awakening. The cover on my bed was pulled back. I could not for a moment remember where I had laid my head to sleep. I was revealed half naked on the mattress – my nightdress rolled and twisted at my waist with the movement of my dreams. I was being pulled so hard I could do nothing but follow. My feet fumbled for solid floor as I tugged at my nightdress to hide my shame. And before I was entirely convinced I was no longer dreaming I found myself running for my life. My captor was before me still squeezing on to my wrist, she turning to look on me only to say, ‘Hurry nah.’ Other girls were running alongside us. The doors they hurtled through slammed behind them like gunshot. The slapping of our bare feet echoed on the stone floor of every long corridor we ran down, before we were funnelled to one single door where I was pushed and jostled through the hole by other girls, whose manner insisted they should get there before me. The room was so bright with sunlight that at first I could not see. But then I observed overhead shower pipes and felt wetness under my feet. My captor released my wrist now and in one deft movement pulled her nightdress over her head and stood before me as naked as Eve. She gestured for me to copy her but became exasperated, sighing and tutting as she watched me untying the buttons and bows that modesty had stitched at the neck of my nightclothes.

  ‘Come, hurry,’ the girl said, slapping my useless hands out of the way and fumbling at my buttons. She began to lift my nightdress but I held it tight, not wanting to be naked in front of so many strangers. She hit at my hands again. So I hit hers and for a second she stopped, startled, before hitting mine so hard I gave up the fight. And I stood, with all the other girls, exposed – clutching my elbows to me, trying to hide my breasts, between my legs, my backside, my unattractive knees. Then the water came on, pouring down on us in a rain of icy water. Every girl screamed. One deafening sound that drowned all others. Mouths open so wide I could see deep into pink throats, as girls with tendons that stood out on their necks like rope yelled with the force of beasts. And as I looked on my captor – naked, shivering, screaming, a glistening waterfall running down her black skin, past nipples that stood as erect as bullets – I detected a gleam of pure abandon on her face. So I closed my eyes, opened my mouth and let my lungs give forth the most savage ferocious cry my body had ever produced. The blessed relief of this noise cleansed like a silent prayer. I screamed until I became aware that the water was no longer flowing, the room was calm and I was gently being shaken by my captor, who was saying softly, ‘You can stop now.’

  It was Celia Langley who pulled me from my bed that first morning. She believed it was the duty of a third-year pupil such as she to teach an untrained new girl (such as I) about the necessity of arriving early for the morning shower. The first out of the shower, dressed and smelling of sweet-scented soap would, on arriving for breakfast in the dining room, get a cup of chocolate that was still hot and drinkable. If you were second, third, or a deliberately dawdling fourth, then the chocolate would not only be cold but have a skin on it so thick it could be stitched into a hat. When Celia Langley took hold of my wrist that first morning – I the new girl in a bed next to hers – she placed me not only in the shower but firmly under her wing.

  Celia came to my bed every evening after assembly, roll-call and prayers. Smelling of jasmine, she sat close beside me in the hour before the electric lights were extinguished. With everything Celia said, even if only telling me the time of day or commenting on the heat, she leaned with her lips close to my ear to whisper as if disclosing a hush-hush truth. These breathy tête-à-têtes were always accompanied by the gentle clatter of her knitting needles as she fashioned socks for men who, like Michael, were travelling to England to fight in the war. In those dusky evenings Celia, being a year older than I, coached me in what to expect from my lectures.

  ‘Geography will be taught by Miss Wilkinson,’ she told me. ‘She will try to tell you of glaciation or something of this nature. But if you are to mention, even if only in passing, the Pennine Hills – and only the Pennines will do this – her eyes will focus somewhere only she can see and instead of the geography lesson she will tell tales of her childhood in Yorkshire. While these tales are not particularly interesting they do allow you to look out the window on the trees.’

  Celia whispered that Oliver Cromwell had a large ugly wart on his face when she found me struggling with a composition on this man’s accomplishments. Placing a delicate hand on my shoulder she informed me that Miss Newman who taught history held a theory that Mr Cromwell’s wart was a conspicuous sign that he had been sent by the devil to destroy the English monarchy. Mention this wart, Celia hushed, and Miss Newman, who believed coloured girls had a better understanding of these sorts of things, being less civilised and closer to nature, would write in my margins that I was astute. And all girls classified as astute were given the honour of entertaining everyone at evening assembly with a recitation.

  I could not choose between Henry V’s speech before the battle of Agincourt or Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Both allowed for rousing dramatic interpretation. The daffodils, however, Celia thought too simple – no girl at the college would be unable to recite that.

  ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.’ It was Celia who instructed me to physically intimate the expressions referred to in the text – to stiffen the sinew and summon up the blood by raising my shoulders while holding my head aloft, so my chin could rise with the dignity of the oration, and to end with a genteel cry, but not too loud, for Harry, England and St George.

  I was the talk of the college for several weeks. And when I thought my spirits could go no higher, my fairy cakes – with their yellow cream and spongy wings – were declared by the domestic-science teacher, Miss Plumtree, to be the best outside the tea-shops of southern England.

  There were sixty pupils in the first class I had to teach. Sixty children fidgeting like vermin behind rows of wooden desks. Sixty nappy-headed, runny-nosed, foul-smelling ragamuffins. Sixty black faces. Some staring on me, gaping as idiots do. Some looking out of the window. Some talking as freely as if resting under a lemon tree.

  I was used to children from good homes. In Mr and Mrs Ryder’s school wealthy, fair-skinned and high-class children sat ruly waiting for my instruction before lowering their heads to complete the task satisfactorily. In that school no child ever wiped their running nose across their sleeve before raising their hand high into the air and waving it around like semaphore. No child would chant, ‘Miss Roberts, Miss Roberts’, over and over until I could not recognise my own name. And no child ever subtracted five from ten and made the answer fifty-one.

  Job himself would have wept genuine tears trying to get this rabble to face the board at once and Solomon would have scratched his head trying to understand what the wretched boy Percival Brown did with all the pencils. This light-skinned, green-eyed boy had looked the most trustworthy pupil for the task of handing one pencil to each member of the class. Half-way round the room he came to me saying the pencils had run out.

  ‘How they run out
? I gave you sixty pencils,’ I queried him. ‘Did anyone get more than one pencil?’ I enquired of the class. Every one of those senseless children was suddenly attentive enough to shake their heads. ‘What you do with the pencils?’ I asked Percival Brown again. And this thieving boy just looked on me with a rascal’s eye and shrugged. I searched in his pockets, I went through his desk, while this class of seven-year-old ruffians peered at me and silently laughed.

  And all through this mockery I was closely observed by Miss Cleghorn, who sat at the back of the class, her glasses on the tip of her nose, writing a report marked: ‘Progress and suitability of trainee teachers’. As every one of my classes ended – the herd of children stampeding to their play – she would approach me. Cocking her head to one side and looking to her notebook as if reading she would say, ‘Miss Roberts, you must try to maintain better discipline among your pupils.’ Or: ‘You are, I am afraid, Miss Roberts, letting these children get the better of you.’ Or: ‘You cannot expect a child to respect and obey a teacher who cannot maintain order within the classroom.’ While I, nodding impotently, mumbled that I would undertake to improve my performance.

  I hungered to make those children regard me with as high an opinion as I had for the principal and tutors at my college. Those white women whose superiority encircled them like an aureole, could quieten any raucous gathering by just placing a finger to a lip. Their formal elocution, their eminent intelligence, their imperial demeanour demanded and received obedience from all who beheld them. As I prepared my lessons ready for the next day I resolved to summon every tissue of purpose within me to command that class to look on me with respect.

  But in the morning their grubby little faces would file past me. Percival Brown grinning and picking at a scab on his elbow before handing me a browning star apple as a gift. Those sixty black children started the day by looking on me eagerly as we put our hands together ready to pray. But then as we lifted our heads after the devotion their fickle minds would start wandering again, roaming the classroom, drifting round the yard, their gazes fixed upon anywhere but me and the lesson I was about to give.