Small Island

by Andrea Levy

  ‘And I pay them no mind,’ she snapped back to me.

  ‘Good, because you know what? The King has the same problem.’ But her nose had risen into the air and I feared I was losing her once more. I put my elbow out to her. ‘Come let us stroll like the King and Queen down the Mall.’ But she sucked on her teeth and turned her eye from me.

  I bought her a cup of tea and a cake at a café. ‘Why you waste your money on cake?’ she asked me. ‘It will spoil your appetite for the food I will make.’

  Oh, I do hope so, was my thought. Of course I did not utter those words for this woman’s mood was once more bleak as the dark cold fog I viewed through the window of the café. Who knows how long we sat there in silence eating on our cake, sipping on our tea? Not me, for three boys came greeting me with a cheery nod, looking on Hortense with a wink of: ‘Okay there, man – you have a pretty coloured lady.’

  ‘You know these men?’ Hortense asked.

  ‘They are from home,’ I told her.

  ‘And you know them all?’

  ‘I know they are from home.’

  ‘But you don’t know them?’

  ‘No, but I know they are from home.’ I did not tell her that some days I was so pleased to see a black face I felt to run and hug the familiar stranger. She took off a silly white glove to wipe some crumbs from her lip and I sensed a little thaw. I am not a gambling man but I was a desperate one. ‘So, how you like London?’ I asked.

  ‘I dreamed of coming to London,’ she said. Her eye was not on me but focused on the stirring tea in her cup.

  ‘Well, there you see, not many people have a dream come true.’

  And hear this – with no warning she start to cry again. Damn – I was losing me touch. Tears were dropping into her tea. Out came the Sunday handkerchief. A shaking hand dabbing once more at her eye. I thought to apologise but feared that do-do might fall from my careless mouth. It was a timid hand I stretched across the table to place over hers. I waited for her to slap it away. But she did not.

  ‘What am I to do now?’ she said softly. ‘I thought I would come here and teach.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘I can look after you.’

  As I suspected, the do-do fell. She pulled her hand so rough from under mine, it slap on the table. Cha, nah, man, this woman had me no longer crafty. ‘I am your husband . . .’ I started. I said it too firm, I know I did. Looking on her pouting mouth I quickly changed, ‘Well, come, let me see. What else can you do?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Can you sew?’

  ‘Of course,’ she told me.

  ‘Is that “of course” like you can cook? Or is that “of course” because you can actually sew?’

  ‘I can sew. I have been sewing since I was a girl.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then I know where you might find some work.’

  ‘Sewing?’ She shout this, all tears outraged away. ‘But I am a teacher.’

  ‘And a teacher you will be even when you are sewing.’

  She sucked on her teeth in a most unladylike manner. So I told her, ‘Hortense, your mummy never tell you, “Needs must when the devil drives”? Look at me, for too long I have been driving lorries but one day . . .’ I hesitated.

  ‘What?’ she asked

  ‘One day I will study the law.’ Man, those words sounded so foolish. Let out into the cold air of a London night that hopeless dream soared so far from reach I heard the angels laughing. It was my turn to look away. For I was a big-talk buffoon. Suddenly her hand, delicate and tender, gently place itself over mine. I dared not look to see if her touch was real. My doubt might melt it. A minute it rested there before she said, ‘I can cook.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘My teacher, Miss Plumtree said my cake was the best outside the tea-shops of southern England.’

  ‘Your teacher taste it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And still she say it better than one she eat in a tea-shop.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She tell you where this tea-shop is, because we must be sure not to go there?’

  ‘Are you teasing me, Gilbert Joseph?’ Just as she said that another boy came to our table. He was old and cold. Two scarves were round his head with a brown hat squashed down on the top.

  ‘Cold today, eh?’ He smiled, with the few teeth he had left.

  ‘Yes, man,’ I said.

  He did not smell so good, his brown skin dusted grey with dirt. It was a struggle for him to tip his hat to Hortense as it was pushed down so far. But finally it came off. ‘Cold day today, Miss,’ he said to her.

  She glanced at him, from his scarf-wrapped head, past his baggy stained trousers, to his dirty shoes. She looked swiftly around her and, in the wink of an eye, she came back to this man. And she answered him, ‘I have found that this is a very cold country.’

  The man tipped his hat again. ‘Ah, very cold, Miss,’ he muttered, as he moved on, ‘very cold.’

  Fifty-two

  Bernard

  Felt like a thief. Silly, I know. A man can’t burgle his own home. But the turn of the key in the lock. Unfamiliar objects in the room. Odd smell. Somehow made it all feel clandestine. I knew they’d be out. I’d seen them leave in the morning. Dressed up to the nines. Hardly aware of how queer they appeared. Would have been hard, I know, but they made no attempt to blend. His suit smart but baggy as a tramp. She completely overdressed – white gloves on a weekday. Still, I knocked a few times – just in case. Who knows how many more could be in there? Just a precaution. Not fear. Volatile creatures. No need to arouse them more than necessary.

  There was a huge trunk blocking most of the doorway. Hardly room to turn. I banged a shin trying to navigate between bed and chair. A curious smell of gas. I wondered if they knew how to use it properly. Can’t be too careful. Checked the tap but it was firmly off. The unpleasant odour clung like dirt. Tatty cloth sprawled over the bed. Armchair limp and wounded – riddled with holes. Dead flowers in a jam-jar. The place was a disgrace.

  Ma used to use this room. Sewing, mending, reading and suchlike. Always when I lost her, me a little boy, I would climb the stairs. If the door was closed I knew she was there. I’d tap three times, softly.

  ‘What are good little boys?’ she’d say.

  ‘Seen and not heard,’ I’d tell her. Only then she’d tell me to come in. Beckon me to sit beside her chair. And I’d watch her fingers in the dim firelight nimbly darning socks on a mushroom. Or embroidering something splendid. Any other footsteps heard on the stairs she’d stop. Listen. Her lips silently counting the flights taken. A door shutting and she’d say (not to me, but out loud) a name. That would be the lodger who’d just arrived home or just gone out. Pa rarely came up here. At least, he never got all the way to join us while Ma was alive. She’d know his footsteps, you see. Be up and out, curious to know what he wanted before he’d come too far. Pa was born in this room. His father and a couple of the great-aunts before him. A woman’s room, Ma called it. Not only because of the births. It was the view from the window. She could spy on the whole street without anyone realising, she said. It was the top of her world.

  In Brighton (and out east), I often thought fondly of the creaking wooden stairs, the cavernous empty rooms, the stuck sashes of this venerable old house. Sometimes thought of it more than Queenie, I admit. But, funny thing, it was Ma I felt I’d let down, not Pa. The house was going to ruin. Of course, the war didn’t help. Lucky, some would say, to survive still with bricks and mortar to call your own. But I was a poor steward none the less. Couldn’t see anything out of the windows now. The curtains grubby and ripped. These coloured people don’t have the same standards. I’d seen it out east. Not used to our ways. When in Rome . . . Lost on these immigrants. They knew no better, like children, Mr Todd believed. But I was having none of it. He’d never been out east. Never seen how cunning these colonial types could be. Children? Poppycock. Had to put him straight. I was more experienced, you see. The
recipe for a quiet life is each to their own. The war was fought so people might live amongst their own kind. Quite simple. Everyone had a place. England for the English and the West Indies for these coloured people. Look at India. The British knew fair play. Leave India to the Indians. That’s what we did. (No matter what a hash they make of it.) Everyone was trying to get home after the war to be with kith and kin. Except these blasted coloured colonials. I’ve nothing against them in their place. But their place isn’t here. Mr Todd thought they would only survive one British winter. I hoped he was right. These brown gadabouts were nothing but trouble.

  Didn’t hear their footsteps on the stairs. Hearing not as keen since India. (Bullets and blasts saw to that.) I would have stood my ground anyway. No harm done. They looked a pitiful sight as they walked in. A pair of sodden minstrels once the gaiety’s past. Decked in seaside colours the pair of them. Their clothes far too flimsy for our climate. Drooping and sagging with the damp. These people belonged in hot climes. It would be a kindness to return them to the backward place they came from.

  We all looked at each other for a good while – pondering what next. A loss for words on both sides before the darkie fellow asked me what I was doing in the room.

  ‘Looking around,’ I told him.

  Cheeky blighter tells me that this room – at the top of my house – does in fact belong to him.

  ‘I beg to differ,’ I said.

  He looked puzzled by that. Gazed at me as if I was the foreigner.

  ‘This is my house.’ I said it carefully so the idiot might follow. But it made no difference.

  According to this darkie I could not just come into his room. Somehow I needed his permission. I think not.

  ‘I can go anywhere I please in my own house,’ I told him. That started him off.

  Rent, he shouted. Said he paid plenty of rent.

  ‘I’m not interested in what you pay,’ I said. ‘This is my house.’

  The conversation was over as far as I was concerned. He, of course, had other ideas. Had the nerve to ask me how I got into the room.

  ‘None of your business,’ I told him. But I showed him the keys anyway. Left him in no doubt as to who had the upper hand. My house, and I’ve a key to every room. But it seemed to be of little importance to this black chappie. Still told me to get out. Raised his voice. Unnecessary, of course. But I’d learned a sharp lesson already from these people – tutored by his foul-mouthed friend downstairs: there was no reasoning with them. Didn’t want any more rough stuff. But I fought a war to protect home and hearth. Not about to be invaded by stealth.

  ‘This is my house and I’ll go into whichever room I please,’ I informed him.

  It was his privacy he started ranting about next. Said he paid rent therefore he deserved – yes, deserved – privacy.

  Cheeky blighter had me lost for words. ‘You deserve . . . you deserve!’ What he deserved was to be thrown on to the street. Him and all the other ungrateful swine. He came towards me then. Eyes bulging like a savage’s. ‘I’ll have the police on you if there is any trouble,’ I had to tell him firmly. Put his palms up to me. Submissive. Telling me that he didn’t want any vexation. Said he was only interested to find out what I wanted. But I’d seen all their tricks out in India. Straightened myself up – I was taller than him, you see. Told him, ‘You’re going to have to leave.’

  Four times he asked me why. Standing so close I was having to breathe his air. Nothing for it. Notified him in the end, ‘I’m selling the house.’ And, funny thing, he announced to me that Queenie had never told him this. As if she would. Queenie, he called her. ‘This is my house, not my wife’s,’ I said, ‘Not for her to tell you anything.’ Seemed I had hit a nerve. He really started ranting then. It was Queenie he paid the rent to. It was Queenie who let him stay here. It was Queenie he answered to.

  ‘I’d thank you to call her Mrs Bligh,’ I said to the cheeky blighter.

  He took no notice. Was off again. Wanting to know if Queenie (said it to annoy) also required him to go. I soon shut him up.

  ‘I’m Queenie’s . . . Mrs Bligh’s husband. It is my house and I wish you to leave.’ I thought that was clear enough but the dimwit asked the same question again. ‘Oh, good God, man,’ I said. ‘Do you understand English? You took advantage of her good nature. But now I’m back we intend to live respectably again. It’s what I fought a war for.’

  I thought he was calming down. He took a deep breath. Looked to his feet. Bit his ample lip. Mentioned, almost quietly, that he, too, had fought in the war. I didn’t doubt it. I’d seen colony troops up in Blackpool. Brought over for clerical duties and suchlike. Useful, of course, but hardly fighting men. Apparently all he now required was the chance of a decent life. ‘I dare say,’ I told him. Barely needed to point around the pitiful room but I did. ‘But look at this place – it’s a disgrace.’

  The woman started muttering then. Couldn’t understand a word. Just caught something about trying to make the room nice. Nice? I nearly laughed. Those cosy times up here with Ma. A chair in front of a roaring fire. A pot of tea, a muffin each. That was nice. To look at it now made my blood boil.

  ‘Well, my dear,’ I said, ‘you could try harder.’ I didn’t see it coming, it happened too fast. He pushed me hard on the shoulder. Shouting at me, this bloody darkie, to get out. Nothing for it. Pushed him right back. That bit taller, you see. Sent him reeling. Tried to stay calm. ‘No, it’s you that must get out,’ I informed him. Hotheaded blighters, these dark immigrants. Once they’re woken they’re hard to get back in the bottle. He came back at me. Told me the place was falling down. ‘Rubbish,’ I said. Even Hitler only left it a little shabby. Nothing like the slum these people were hell-bent on. His audacity then astounded. Implied he was a friend of my wife. ‘How dare you?’ I said. ‘A friend? With the likes of you?’ Excitable, these darkies. Worse than the coolies. He started jumping up and down in some blinking war-dance saying something about bloodclots. He was going to bust my head, he said. I should watch my mouth or he would make me into mash. I should be careful what I said next. Shocking behaviour. I was pleased to see Queenie rush through the door, I admit.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she yelled. She was puffing like a bulldog. ‘What’s all the noise?’

  ‘I was just telling these – these people they have to leave.’

  Wouldn’t even let her catch her breath before he was at her. Demanding to know what was happening. Pleading to a woman. No shame.

  ‘I’ll thank you to address your questions to me,’ I told him firmly.

  ‘Shut up,’ Queenie shouted. At me! Took the wind from me, I admit. ‘Let me talk to them,’ she said. Shouldn’t have to hear that from your wife. ‘Now what’s going on up here?’ Especially in front of coloureds.

  ‘These people have to leave. I won’t have wogs in my house.’

  He poked his finger at me then. Told me he’d already warned me to watch my mouth. ‘I’ll say what I like—’ I told him.

  But Queenie started to shout. Wants me to be quiet, she said. Put a sock in it. Belt up. Calm down. Good God, where were her loyalties? Taking a darkie’s side over her own husband. He saw it, of course. Jeered at me to listen to my wife. ‘Gilbert, you can shut up too,’ she told him. And not before time.

  ‘Yes. Get out,’ I said.

  Off he went again. As if I had not made the situation absolutely clear. Ranting once more. His room and it’s me who should get out. Pushed me. The blighter. Both women threw themselves between us. But I managed to get an arm out. Gave him a shove. I shouted then, ‘Is this woman your wife or just showing you a good time?’ Caught him better than any punch. All kinds of foul coolie abuse started spitting from him. Darkie woman tried to hold him back. Almost amusing. Except suddenly Queenie gripped her stomach. She was in pain. Face pale and blushing like raspberry ripple. Mouth wide as a cave. She howled fierce as a wild thing. All froze like some ludicrous tableau.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ she was whimpering. Bent d
ouble with an ‘Oh, God!’ Grabbed out. Caught a handful of the darkie woman.

  Concern made me find my voice: ‘What is it, Queenie?’

  She was panting, tongue fleshy as steak. Darkie woman tried lowering her on to a chair. She wouldn’t sit, though. Her fist was clenching handfuls of the woman’s coat. Blackie puts out his hand to steady her. ‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ I told him. Pushed them both out the way (roughly, I admit). ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’ Managed to take her weight but she was surprisingly heavy. Almost dropped her. He jumped forward, of course, ready to catch. Barely disguised, the lust in his eye. Fingers splayed, he laid both hands on her. ‘Get your filthy hands off my wife,’ I shouted.

  She was hysterical, screaming, ‘Get off me!’

  Quite.

  But it was me she batted away. Force sent me tripping over the trunk. This was absurd.

  ‘Hortense, you help me,’ Queenie said.

  ‘Don’t be ludicrous,’ I told her.

  Dimwitted darkie girl just pointed at herself. Totally baffled. ‘Me?’

  ‘You need a doctor, Queenie,’ I said.

  I went to help her again but she howled before even my fingertip touched.

  ‘Hortense. Come on. Help me downstairs. Please.’

  I had to push the black again. Lunging forward, he was, to get another feel. He made a fist. Nothing for it – I made two back. Beckoned him on. That bit taller, you see.

  ‘Stop it,’ Queenie shouted. Straightening up, the darkie woman took her arm. Brown coward dropped his guard. I made a final move to assist Queenie. But she was having none of it. Calm she was. Pleading, ‘Bernard, please, just get away from me.’Then both women staggered from the room like battle casualties.

  Fifty-three

  Hortense

  It was not enough to turn the key in the lock. Mrs Bligh commanded I take a chair to stand on so I might slide along the bolt.

  ‘Your husband will be locked from his home,’ I informed her.

  But my protestations only caused her to say, ‘Good.’