by Andrea Levy
This old RAF volunteer had slept in barracks with many more than six men and everyone know war is as hard as life can get. But sleep in this tiny malodorous room, step over three beds to sit on yours, watch as one boy jumps out of his bed to go to work and another returning from work jumps in to take his place, have this man shush and cuss you because he needs to sleep while you try to dress to look respectable for another day, try shaving with no water and sucking cornflakes so the crunching does not disturb and you will swear those days of war were a skylark.
But still breezy from the sailing on the Windrush these were the first weeks for we Jamaicans. And every one of us was fat as a Bible with the faith that we would get a nice place to live in England – a bath, a kitchen, a little patch of garden. These two damp cramped rooms that the friend of Winston’s brother had let us use were temporary. One night, maybe two. More private than the shelter. Better than the hostel. Two months I was there! Two months, and this intimate hospitality had begun to violate my hope. I needed somewhere so I could start to live.
So how many gates I swing open? How many houses I knock on? Let me count the doors that opened slow and shut quick without even me breath managing to get inside. Man, these English landlords and ladies could come up with excuses. If I had been in uniform – still a Brylcreem boy in blue – would they have seen me different? Would they have thanked me for the sweet victory, shaken my hand and invited me in for tea? Or would I still see that look of quiet horror pass across their smiling face like a cloud before the sun, while polite as nobility they inform me the room has gone? Or listen as they let me know, so gently spoken, ‘Well, I would give it to you only I have lots of lodgers and they wouldn’t like it if I let it to a coloured.’ Making sure I understand, ‘It’s not me – if it was just me I’d let you,’ before besmirching the character of some other person who, I was assured, could not bear the sight of me. Man, there was a list of people who would not like it if I came to live – husband, wife, women in the house, neighbours, and hear this, they tell me even little children would be outraged if a coloured man came among them. Maybe I should start an expedition – let me trace it back and find the source of this colour bar. Go first to that husband, then to that wife, the woman in the house, the neighbours, the children. When each of them tell me it not them but the next man I move on. Eventually the originator of this colour prejudice would have to stand there before me. And I could say to their face, ‘So, it is you that hates all niggers, I presume.’
It was desperation that made me remember 21 Nevern Street, SW5. From that little scrap of paper I first read in a field in Lincolnshire many years before. And from envelopes carefully addressed in my neatest hand. Who knows? That house might have been nothing more than a gap in the road where neighbours still talk of the rocket hit. A stranger might have come to the door to ponder long on who lived there before. A vexed husband’s fist might have been all that I would see. But it was not just my feet that were too sore to care.
Trepidation trembled my hand as I rang a bell that did not work. I knocked. It was Queenie Bligh who answered. And again she looked on me as she had done when we first met. For the count of two seconds she thought I was someone else. Then she called my face to mind and said, ‘Well, if it isn’t Airman Gilbert Joseph. Now, what the bloody hell happened to you?’
1948
Twenty
Hortense
He woke me rude, this man, shaking on my shoulder. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I make you a cup of tea.’ It was not the rousing that most alarmed me but the white smoke that came puffing from his mouth like he was the devil himself. ‘I must get to work now,’ he said, as smoke wafted from him as sure as if his inside was fire. I seized the cover to me. ‘I no touch you. I am going to work.’ As I raised my head from the pillow I saw breath come as a curtain of vapour from my own mouth. Only as I felt the pinching of the cold on my exposed cheek, sharp as acid, did I remember that I was in England.
‘Cold today, eh?’ he said. Awake now, the covers too flimsy, my body began to shiver. ‘Come, drink the tea – warm you up. I must get to work now.’ He put the cup on to the table. A glance to the window told me it was still night time. This man never said he worked during the night. He pulled back the ragged curtain but it made no difference to the light – only excite a draught of chill to nibble on my other cheek. ‘It’s morning,’ he told me.
‘Morning?’ I said.
‘Yes, it is nearly seven o’clock.’
But there was no sun – not even a feeblest shadow. How the birds wake in this country and know when to sing? Gilbert rouse them with a cup of tea? ‘It’s too dark,’ I said.
‘It is winter. Always dark on winter morning,’ he told me. The man sat heavy in the armchair to lace up his shoe. ‘It get dark early too,’ he said, although he was not addressing me but thinking loud. ‘Most of the day dark. Sometimes if you blink you can miss the whole day.’ I stretched out my arm for the tea but the cold threatened to take the skin from it, so I replaced it quickly back under the cover.
‘I put on the fire for you,’ he said, wrapping himself in this big dark coat. ‘But if it go out you must put money in the meter. You think you can do that?’ I did not give the man an answer, merely turned my head from him. It was not I who was the fool. ‘I will be back at six o’clock. You think you can fix me up a little something to eat? There are some eggs and potatoes in that cupboard by the sink. You can make some chips for me?’
He said it so plaintive I almost felt sorrow for him. ‘Of course,’ I told him. Then he was gone.
Twenty-one
Gilbert
It was with trepidation that I had learned to pass by Queenie’s door. That last flight of stairs saw me like a criminal stepping lightly in my socks. Balancing, I swear, on one toe alone so I did not make noise enough to rouse her. It was early morning – not even the birds had sensed a new day – and I am approaching her door so light, my feet are feeling no floor, just hovering above lino.
‘Gilbert,’ I heard her call. Man, this woman’s hearing so good she must catch the sound of the stitching rustling in my socks. ‘Is that you, Gilbert?’ To avoid her I would have to float down from my window on angel’s wings.
‘No,’ I called.
‘I can tell it’s you,’ she told me, her face now at the door.
How? I wanted to ask her. Tell me how, in God’s name, she always knows when I am near? ‘Queenie, I am just off to work. You wan’ me be late?’
‘Won’t take a minute.’
Luck is a funny thing. To some only a large win of money at the pools is luck. Or finding a valuable jewel at your feet on a London street. That surely is luck. But during the war luck take another turn. The bomb that just miss you is luck. Only your leg blown off and not your head is luck. All your family die but your mummy is spared – congratulations, you a fortunate man. So, let me tell you what luck is for a coloured man who is just off a boat in England. It is finding Queenie Bligh. It is seeing she has a big house and is happy to take me and a few of the boys in as lodgers. Greater than sipping rum punch from a golden bowl – that is luck England-style.
Early days and Queenie was still that pretty blonde woman who friendly leaned across a table to share a rock bun with me. And though no longer dressed in uniform, I was still, even in my plain suit, one of the boys in blue. Happy to have me around her house, she made me tea. We, sipping the drink, would talk. All that business with her father-in-law: ‘That’s all in the past,’ she told me. No need for me to worry. And her husband: ‘I don’t know what’s happened to him but I’ve got to get on with my life, Gilbert.’ She needed my help – a woman on her own. She wore me out. Jumping steps and laughing like a girl as we moved furniture around the house so she might let the rooms. Let me tell you, every night in those early days I slipped to my knees to give thanks at my good fortune and cuss those hastily taken marriage vows. Meeting up with Queenie Bligh was the best luck this Jamaican man had ever had.
Then Winston a
nd Kenneth moved in. The rent Queenie charged us made me clean my ear to ask again. Three pounds a week each for these rundown rooms? Winston and even Kenneth gaped dumbfounded as she assured us she had no choice but to charge that sort of money. Then with the first week’s rent I delivered to her on Saturday morning she told me someone kept the door open too long. The next day she wanted me to know someone shut the door too loud. Something smelling up a room. Someone making too much noise. I must tell the boys not to leave on the light. Have I told the boys to keep their room clean?
‘Cha, me thought you say she your friend. So why the woman act like bakkra?’ Kenneth wanted to know.
We must not come in too late. There must be no one in the rooms without permission. Can we step over the second step on the first flight because it creaks? ‘Gilbert,’ she told me, ‘I’m relying on you to keep them all under control.’
Was I her caretaker now? This woman start vex me so I think her husband a sensible man to lose him way between here and India. Man, if there was a way I could disappear before her, come see me grasp it.
‘Was that Kenneth who helped you with that big trunk last night?’ she ask me.
Once I could not tell a lie. But to this new Queenie, and my abiding discouragement, I had now become skilled in the art. ‘No,’ I tell her.
‘I don’t want that Kenneth here, Gilbert. I don’t mind Winston. But I can’t tell which is which. I don’t want Kenneth here. I don’t trust him. He’s sly. And I’ve had Mr Todd round complaining about this and that.’
‘No worry. That was Winston help me with the trunk.’
‘You sure?’
‘Of course – why would I tell you a lie?’
She look in my eye. Then, ‘How’s your wife? Why didn’t you meet her?’
‘I am late for work now. I must go.’
‘Hang on a minute, Gilbert, there’s just one thing . . .’ she say. This one thing could be ‘Come dig up the garden for me.’
‘I must be off,’ I tell her, presenting her with my back.
‘Won’t take a minute . . .’ she call out.
Discourteous it may be but I am gone.
Twenty-two
Hortense
I hoped that Celia Langley could no longer see me. Where was she now? Sipping fruit punch and fanning herself in sunlight. While here was I on my first morning in England, shivering with goose bumps rising large as hillocks and my jaw aching with the effort of keeping my teeth from chattering. I never dreamed England would be like this. So cheerless. Determined, I held my breath but still I could hear no birdsong. The room was pitiful in the grey morning light. I thought it tumbledown last night but daylight was happy to show me more of its filthy secrets. Plaster missing from a bit of the wall. Jagged black lines of cracking everywhere. A missing handle on the chest of drawers. No basin in the sink. And there were lacy white patterns on the windowpane. Frost. I was taught by my headmistress, Miss Morgan, that frost is to be found on the outside of a window in England, but my curious finger got fastened to this stuff. Sticky with cold it melted under my warm fingertip on the inside of this room! For the useless fire roared with fierce heat only when I stood right on top of it. One inch, that was all, one inch back and the heat no longer reached me. Two inches, and I was in need of my coat. Three and it was as wintry as on the street. This room would not do. I could hear Celia Langley laughing on me. ‘The Lord surely moves in mysterious ways, Hortense,’ her mocking tone exclaimed.
But I paid her no mind. I opened my trunk. The bright Caribbean colours of the blanket the old woman had given me in Ochi leaped from the case. The yellow with the red, the blue with the green commenced dancing in this dreary room. I took the far-from-home blanket and spread it on the bed.
Miraculous – it was then I heard a bird sing. Oh, so joyful. Finding colour through a window its spirit rose to chirrup and warble. ‘Don’t laugh on me, Celia Langley,’ I said. ‘Just watch me, nah.’ I determined then to make this place somewhere I could live – if only for this short while. For England was my destiny. I started with that sink. Cracked as a map and yellowing I scrubbed it with soap until my hand had to brush perspiration from my forehead. Pulling the stinking tin potty from under the bed, ‘You next,’ I told it. But then there was knock on the door.
I ceased all movement – not even my heart dared a beat.
‘Anyone there?’ a voice said.
I made no reply. However, my held breath was preparing to choke me. The knock came again.
‘Anyone in there?’ It was the woman from downstairs. The landlady who had the evening before looked on me in a very rude manner. ‘Just like a word. Can you open up?’ Politeness and good breeding left me no choice. I opened up the door a little way.
Her face, coming close to the opening, smiled. ‘Just came to see if you’re all right.’ Her hair so blonde put me in mind of Mrs Ryder. That woman driving a car in her feathered hat as Michael watched her pass. But at once I put the thought from my head. I was in England now. That day was over.
‘Gilbert gone to work?’ the woman asked me. Her head was straining like a curious cat’s, moving this way and that trying to get a good look into the room. ‘I’m from downstairs. Remember me? I let you in last night? Hortense, isn’t it?’
I did not wish to appear rude to this woman on my first day in England so I acknowledged her questions with a small nod of the head.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ she said. What cat was she talking of? Don’t tell me there was a cat that must also live with us in this room. ‘My name’s Mrs Bligh,’ she carried on. ‘But you can call me Queenie, if you like. Everyone here does. Would you like that?’ The impression I received was that she was talking to me as if I was an imbecile. An educated woman such as I.
So I replied, ‘Have you lost your cat?’
And this woman’s eyes rolled as if this was a question I had asked of her several times before. ‘No,’ she told me, too forcefully. ‘In English it means that you’re not saying very much. Everything all right, though? I just thought I’d come and have a word with you.’
I did not wish to appear ungrateful as the woman was obviously trying to be kind, even though she had me confused with this cat business. I opened the door wider for her before she thought me impolite. I merely meant for us to talk through a larger opening. But she walked straight through, even though I had not formally invited her in!
‘Oh, you’re tidying up a bit. Men, eh – they’ve got no idea.’ She perused the place as if this was her home. Pushing her nose into corners, she walked the room as if inspecting some task she had asked of me. Alighting upon the sink she said, ‘Bit cracked, isn’t it? Still, you’re keeping it clean, that’s good.’ Now, as she was the landlady and at that moment viewing the sink, I thought to take the opportunity to ask something of her. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but would you perchance have a basin that I might get a use of?’
‘A what?’
‘A basin,’ I repeated.
‘Sorry.’
‘A basin to put at the sink.’
‘A bee – to put what?’
‘A basin.’
‘I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
I thought to say it again slower but then remembered an alternative that would work as well. ‘A bucket,’ I said.
‘A what?’ she started again.
It was useless. Was I not speaking English? I had nothing but the potty to point at instead. But she would surely misunderstand that. And who knows where that confusion could take us? So I hushed my mouth.
‘Where did you get that thing?’ she said, pointing at my blanket. ‘It’s so bright. You need dark glasses for that.’ It obviously amused her. She began a giggle. ‘Did you bring it over with you?’ Moving past the blanket she went to warm her hands on the fire. She bent over closer to the flame. ‘It’s perishing today. I bet you wished you never left somewhere nice and hot?’ When I made no reply she looked to me and mouthed the words, ‘Cold today,’ as if
I might have lost my hearing. ‘When it’s cold,’ she went on, ‘we say it’s “perishing”. Perishing cold. It’s a saying, like the cat got your tongue.’ She turned back to her hand-warming while telling me, ‘You’ll soon get used to our language.’
I told this Englishwoman, ‘I can speak and understand the English language very well, thank you.’
And she said, ‘No need to thank me.’ But I had not meant it to sound grateful. Still she carried on: ‘I’m sure there’s a lot I could teach you, if you wanted.’ And then she sat down on a chair and invited me to come and sit with her. But this was my home, it was for me to tell her when to sit, when to come in, when to warm her hands. I could surely teach this woman something, was my thought. Manners! But then I questioned, Maybe this is how the English do things when they are in England? So I sat.
‘That’s right – sit down.’ Did this woman think I did not understand the injunction, sit down? ‘You don’t say very much, do you?’
I held my tongue. Forbearance prevented me informing her that what I do say she does not appear to comprehend.
‘So how long have you and Gilbert been married, then?’
The barefaced cheek of the question sucked all the breath from me. Did she want to know all my business? I just look on her and wait. Soon this white Englishwoman must realise she is talking ill-mannered to me. But she say it again. This time in that slow way, as if I did not grasp her meaning the first time. But she tricked me. If this woman was to realise that I am an educated person then surely I would have to answer her enquiry. Cha.
‘Gilbert and I have been married for nearly six months,’ I said clearly.
‘Six. Six months?’