Small Island

by Andrea Levy

  ‘I know, Celia Langley, you tell me already!’

  She will live there. She will do that. England, England, England was all she ever talked of. She wore me out with it. But I knew that when the day came she would think nothing of leaving her friend alone at that wretched parish school as she sailed the ocean in the arms of her big-talk man. And Gilbert Joseph took pleasure at my presence for no other reason than his big ideas received a larger audience than when it was just Celia alone.

  On this day he walked between us through the park looking like a man who had recently purchased the moon and the stars. ‘You see how every man envy me. Them saying there is one fortunate man. Two pretty women. Him must have plenty something I have not got.’ He laughed, of course, then opened his elbows for us to slip our arms through. Celia held him this way but I did not.

  ‘Go on, Hortense,’ he urged. ‘You want them think I lose me touch already?’

  And he talked. He talked tirelessly, beginning sometimes with a question to Celia and myself as if a discussion might take place. ‘Let me ask you this one question,’ he would say. But he required no reply from either of us. No encouragement was necessary – he simply answered the enquiry himself and carried on. I was breathless just listening to this man. And all his talk, all his chatter was on just that one subject.

  ‘Let me ask you this one question – you ever see a picture of the House of Parliament in London? It is a sight, let me tell you. When you stand there before it, it looks to all the world like a fairytale castle. You think dragons will breathe fire on you soon. You must see this place.’

  Celia had to drop her hand from his crooked elbow when the passion of his story required him to wave his arms for effect. ‘And Nelson’s Column. You heard of Nelson’s Column? One man so renowned they stick him so high-high in the air, your neck get stiff looking for him. You can hardly see him. Sometimes when the fog come, him vanish completely – only the pigeons can know him still there.’

  As we walked through the dappled shade of a tree he bent to pick a discarded leaf from the ground. Holding it in the flat of his palm he became quiet. As he looked thoughtful at it in his hand his voice – unexpectedly gentle, almost melodious – described how in England the trees lose their leaves before the winter months. Every leaf on every tree turns first red and then golden. With the wind or the passing of time these dazzling leaves fall from the trees covering the parks, the gardens, the pavements with a blanket of gold. ‘And you can walk through these autumn leaves. Everywhere. Children kick them up into the air, or pick up handfuls and throw them into the wind. Everybody does it. Everyone delighting in the leaves that float around them like golden rain.’ He lifted his palm, which held the browning leaf, closer to Celia, saying, ‘Imagine this everywhere.’

  ‘Oh, I would like to see that,’ Celia said.

  At which Gilbert, throwing his leaf to the breeze, stretched his arms open to her saying, ‘Then come now with me to England, Celia.’

  Celia’s eyes widened like a playful puppy’s. ‘Shall I go, Hortense?’ She giggled.

  He took her hands in his. ‘We leave on the next boat.’

  ‘And what about my class?’

  ‘Your friend here can teach your class for you,’ Gilbert joked. ‘Hortense will take care of everything – won’t you, Hortense? She will write to us of the hurricanes and the earthquakes and the shortages of rice on this small island, while we sip tea and search for Nelson on his column. Will you come, Celia?’

  Celia’s eyes were dazzled by that blanket of gold. ‘I shall go,’ she said.

  And Gilbert said, ‘Good.’

  All seemed to be decided between them so I felt it important for me to ask, ‘But what about your mother, Celia? Am I to look after her too?’

  The playful light in her eyes was suddenly extinguished. She stood as still as stone.

  ‘Bring your mother. We will row with her on the Thames.’ Gilbert laughed before he noticed Celia’s eyes steadily gazing on my face. ‘Or leave her,’ he said slowly, looking first at Celia and then at me. ‘What is wrong with your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘Celia’s mother is not at all well,’ I told him. He looked a quizzical eye on me. And I looked to Celia so she might explain to this man the nature of her mother’s ailment. But she did not. Instead she dropped her head to gaze on her feet. So it was left for I to tell this man about her mother and the incident with the airmen on parade. Some parts of the story became a little confused in my mind. When was it that her wig dropped off? How many airmen did it take to hold her back? How far did we chase her before she tripped on one of her dresses? I appealed to Celia to help me with clarification but she refused to look in my face. It was kindly that I concluded the tale by telling Gilbert that the reason Celia’s mother could not accompany them to England was because she was unfortunately quite mad. I looked between them in the silence that followed the tale.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that about your mother,’ Gilbert said.

  Celia lifted her head to him with a tiny smile for the briefest moment only.

  And I said, ‘Yes, I am also sorry for her.’

  But she did not smile that thank-you look to me.

  The ensuing silence had Gilbert scratching his head in an embarrassed manner when suddenly he said, ‘Shall I see if I can get some ice-cream?’ The man had disappeared before I could tell him that I was not fond of that icy cold stuff.

  I was just about to say something nice to Celia, I forget what but something condoling, when she lifted her face to me. There was menace in her eye. Her ample lips were pulled taut into the line of a vicious glower. I did not see it coming – her fist. It came up from behind her and whacked me full in the head. So hard was the blow I nearly fell off my feet as I stumbled dizzy back. When my eyes could once again focus it was to discern my friend Celia walking haughty away from me at great speed.

  ‘Celia,’ I tried to call after her, but that wretched girl had smacked all voice from me.

  Seven

  Hortense

  An intended marriage requires three weeks for the banns to be published. We had just enough time. Three weeks with only one day to spare before the ship sailed for England. The minister sitting us on a pew in the small parish church proceeded to remind us, with an expression as solemn as a Sunday sermon, that marriage was a sanctity. Witnessed by God, it was not to be entered into idly or ill-advisedly.

  Gilbert nodded like a half-wit as the minister went on. He threw his head back, looking to the church roof, when asked the question, ‘How long have you and your wife-to-be known each other?’ Tapping the side of his face with his fingers, mumbling, ‘Now let me see . . .’ he lingered so long with this deliberation that the minister resumed his sermon without receiving an answer. As the minister talked of the joy of seeing two young people embarking on a cherished life together after a period of unprecedented upheaval, Gilbert, satisfied with his trickery, looked furtively to me and winked.

  * * *

  ‘Married!’ Mrs Anderson yelled. ‘But how long have you two known each other?’

  ‘Oh, now, let me see . . . Five days,’ Gilbert said.

  ‘It will be three weeks and five days by the time we are married,’ I explained.

  ‘And three weeks and six days will have passed when I sail to England to see the place is nice for the arrival of my new wife,’ Gilbert added.

  There was complete silence at the table – even the old woman ceased sucking her chicken bone to stare on us. Suddenly Mrs Anderson pushed back her chair, leaped from her seat and wrapped her arms round me before moving on to Gilbert whom she hugged so tight his head almost disappeared into the crease of her bust.

  ‘So you like jazz, Gilbert?’ was all Mr Anderson wanted to know.

  Returning to England was more than an ambition for Gilbert Joseph. It was a mission, a calling, even a duty. This man was so restless he could not stay still. Always in motion he was agitated, impatient – like a petulant boy waiting his turn at cricket. He tol
d me opportunity ripened in England as abundant as fruit on Jamaican trees. And he was going to be the man to pluck it.

  ‘Your brother still there?’ he asked.

  ‘My brother?’

  ‘This Michael you ask me of – your brother – he still in England?’

  ‘Perhaps he is,’ I told him.

  ‘Well, you must let me know his address and I can look him up for you.’

  But this big-ideas man had no money. He had spent all his money, he confided to me, on bees.

  ‘On bees?’ I asked.

  He had some crazy notion about honey producing money. His cousin in St Mary convinced him that keeping bees was foolproof. All he had to do was give this cousin the money to buy hives, jars and printed labels and soon the money from the honey would send Gilbert winging to England.

  ‘But,’ he told me, ‘this cousin of mine lost the bees.’

  ‘How you lose bees?’ I asked.

  His reply? ‘It is not easy, but it can be done.’

  This small setback had left him undeterred. He had another money-making idea. Postcards. Tourists, he told me, who were now flocking to this island for sun and rum need postcards – pictures, scenes of the many wonders of Jamaica to send back to their family at home. He would swiftly be posted to England on the money he made. He sold two. Both to Jamaicans who tearfully remembered the places in the pictures from their youth. The money he made clinked in his pocket. But he was not downcast. He had another plan, he said.

  It was while he was placing an advertisement in the Daily Gleaner for his services – as a storeman or a driver or a clerk or a watchman or a dairyman or a messenger – under the ex-servicemen’s section headed, ‘Help Those Who Helped’, that he saw the notice about a ship that was leaving for England. The Empire Windrush, sailing on 28 May. The cost of the passage on this retired troop-ship was only twenty-eight pounds and ten shillings.

  ‘Of course, this is twenty-eight pounds and ten shillings I have not got,’ he said.

  And at that moment – as Gilbert became demoralised for the first time in the face of his impossible endeavour – I had cause to thank Mr Philip and Miss Ma for a lesson they had long taught me. Prudence. A small amount of my wage every week I placed into the building society for a rainy day. And the days before Gilbert left were the rainiest the island had ever seen. ‘I can lend you the money,’ I told him.

  Dumbstruck, he gaped like an idiot before a smile turned one corner of his mouth. ‘Your mother never tell you, neither a lender nor a borrower be?’

  ‘You can pay me back.’

  ‘Oh, I know that, Miss Mucky Foot. But what I don’t know is why you lend me the money.’

  ‘So you can go to England.’ Again he was silent, so I carried on: ‘I will lend you the money, we will be married and you can send for me to come to England when you have a place for me to live.’

  ‘Oh, woe!’ he shouted. ‘Just say that again because I think me ears playing a trick on me there.’

  ‘You can send for me when you are settled.’

  ‘Not that bit. I know that bit. I hear that bit. It was the bit about a marriage.’

  ‘How else will I come? A single woman cannot travel on her own – it would not look good. But a married woman might go anywhere she pleased.’

  It took Gilbert only two hours to decide to ask me if I would marry him. And he shook my hand when I said yes, like a business deal had been struck between us.

  In the breath it took to exhale that one little word, England became my destiny. A dining-table in a dining room set with four chairs. A starched tablecloth embroidered with bows. Armchairs in the sitting room placed around a small wood fire. The house is modest – nothing fancy, no show – the kitchen small but with everything I need to prepare meals. We eat rice and peas on Sunday with chicken and corn, but in my English kitchen roast meat with two vegetables and even fish and chips bubble on the stove. My husband fixes the window that sticks and the creaky board on the veranda. I sip hot tea by an open window and look on my neighbours in the adjacent and opposite dwelling. I walk to the shop where I am greeted with manners, ‘Good day’, politeness, ‘A fine day today’, and refinement, ‘I trust you are well?’ A red bus, a cold morning and daffodils blooming with all the colours of the rainbow.

  Gilbert cut a surprisingly smart figure at the wedding. We were both astonished to see the other looking so elegant. He in a grey double-breasted suit, his trousers wide, his cuffs clean, his shirt white, his tie secured with a dainty knot, his hair nicely oiled and waving. I, in a white dress with a frill at the hem, white shoes with heels and a hat trimmed with netting sitting at a fashionable angle on my head. Gilbert, taking my hand in front of the altar, whispered softly, ‘You look nice.’

  Gilbert’s side of the congregation was made up of his cousin Elwood, who was his best man, and Elwood’s ageing mother. Elwood was the cousin who lost the bees, a tall lolloping man who spent the service swatting away flies from his face with such regularity I thought him waving to me. His mother, an old woman with a face as sour as tamarind, sat poking her son, asking, ‘Who is he marrying?’ through most of the ceremony.

  Mr and Mrs Anderson and their two sons made up my wedding guests. But after the service was completed all they wanted to say to me was ‘Where’s Celia?’ No word of congratulations or comment on my attire, just what a shame Celia could not come – she being such a good friend to me. They liked Celia, they told me. They had been looking forward to seeing Celia. And could I tell them again why Celia had not come to my wedding? I did not utter a word, for what business was it of theirs that my erstwhile friend now chose to ignore me? When they had exhausted me with these questions they started on Gilbert, who told them, ‘I have not seen Celia for a long time. Hortense tells me her mother is ill. It is a pity she could not come, I would have liked to see Celia one more time before I left.’

  On returning to the Andersons’ house the family insisted on making Gilbert and I a party, no matter how I protested. Mr Anderson perused his records asking, ‘Gilbert, you like Count Basie?’

  ‘Basie is the best.’

  Mrs Anderson brought a mound of chicken from the kitchen and placed it before Rosa, who asked, before devouring, ‘Where is Celia? Such a lovely girl. Where is Celia, Myrtle?’

  ‘You must ask Hortense. She is her friend.’

  Luckily the old woman was not interested in asking anything of me – she was more concerned to begin her nibbling and gnawing. But for once I paid this intolerable situation no mind, realising that I would soon be living in England and able to rise far above these people, higher than any disdain could ever take me. It was of no significance to me that the wedding present from Elwood and his unpleasant mother was a not-quite-full jar of honey. I thanked them, told them it was a pleasure to meet them and wished them good day as they left.

  What did it matter to me that the tuneless music was so loud my head throbbed? Or that the man I had married was prancing around the room screeching while the two little Anderson boys stood one on each of his feet, clinging to his legs, calling out for everyone to watch them? I did not care that on eight occasions I had to find an excuse for why I would not dance as everyone else was. Or that Mrs Anderson painfully landed her abundant backside on me after a complicated step and spin from her husband.

  ‘You like Ellington, Gilbert?’

  ‘Ellington is the best.’

  I only smiled when Mr Anderson, leaning on Gilbert, both of them drunk on rum and giggling like schoolgirls, finally said, ‘Gilbert, you know nothing about jazz, do you?’

  ‘Well you have me there. No.’ Then, as they toasted each other, Gilbert, now leaning on Mr Anderson, said, ‘And let me tell you one more thing – I caan dance. But, hush, do not tell Hortense. You see how this woman likes a party? She will regret marrying a man who has two left feet.’

  So when I said, ‘Gilbert, don’t you have to get ready for your trip tomorrow?’ and everyone looked at me, I was not as embarrassed as I might
have been.

  Even when Mr Anderson winked at Gilbert, slapped his back and said to me, ‘Of course, Hortense, you want to get your husband on his own on your wedding night.’ And Mrs Anderson clapping her hands squealed with amusement.

  Gilbert came to the room with two boys still clinging to his legs. ‘You must go, boys. I have to play with my wife now.’

  He tried to peel them off but they clung tighter, rattling with childish laughing. Mrs Anderson had to be called. She came into the room, grabbed the boys and tucked one under each of her arms. ‘Come, we must leave,’ she told them. Looking to me she smiled, saying, ‘Hortense has something she must show Gilbert.’ Then, with both boys howling, she took them from the room.

  ‘So we are alone,’ Gilbert said.

  He had just one small bag. One small bag for someone travelling so far to start a new life in England. ‘Is this all you have?’

  He looked to his meagre luggage, then said, ‘And I have you, of course, Hortense.’

  I took a breath before asking, ‘You will call for me? You won’t get to England forgetting all about me and leave me here?’

  He came closer to me from across the room. He put his hands on my shoulders. ‘Of course not – we have a deal. You are my wife.’

  ‘There may be women who will turn your head in England.’

  ‘Hortense,’ he said, holding me firmer, ‘we have a deal. I give you my word I will send for you.’

  Then, for the first time, he kissed me gently on my mouth. His breath smelt of rum but his lips were warm and soft against mine. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again he kissed me once more but this time the man poked his wet slippery tongue into my mouth. I choked finding myself sucking on this wriggling organ. I could not breathe. I backed away from him, panting with the effort of catching my breath.

  Turning away, I took off my hat to place it delicately in the cupboard. I could have been no more than five seconds but when I turned back Gilbert stood before me as naked as Adam. And between his legs a thing grew. Rising up like a snake charmed – with no aid, with no help – it enlarged before my eyes, rigid as a tree trunk and swelling into the air. I could do nothing but stare.