by Andrea Levy
Softly I hear him mumble. ‘It’s everything to do with you. You and your kind.’
And hear this, soft-hearted man that I am, I go to help him up. For suddenly pity for him flowed over me like a wave. No man – no matter how fool-fool a white ras clot – should have to look on his wife suckling a baby that is not his. ‘Let me help you up, man?’ I said. But he thrust my hand away. Then, slowly lifting his head, he glared upon my face with unmistakable hate. The man attack me, pour blood from my nose, accuse me of all sorts of things I had never got the chance to do with his wife. Come, let me tell you, all at once I was pleased this dogheart English bastard had too-too much to bear.
Cha, I hobbled up the stairs to the room – one bare foot, one clothed – rather than stay another second looking for the item. Let them keep the wretched shoe, for I wanted no more of Queenie and her fool-fool husband’s confusion. I was fed up. Perhaps Elwood was right. Of course he was. About what? I could not remember. But he was warm in Jamaica and I was here, bloody and barefoot. Come, that must make my cousin the cleverer of us two. When I got to the door of the room I found it was locked.
‘Hortense,’ I called. ‘Come, let me in, nah?’ How long did I wait before I realised she would not? Shivering and hopping on my shoed foot I called again, ‘Hortense.’ I worried she might be asleep for there was no sound from inside. I rattled at the lock. ‘You in there? Come, I am freezing out here. Hurry.’ Suddenly the door opened and there was she dressed neatly in her hat, coat and white gloves. Before I had a chance to enter the room she had told me, ‘I will call for my trunk when I am settled in.’
‘Settled in where?’ I asked her. But she gave no reply except to throw her nose once more into the air before brushing me aside to pass. ‘Wait, nah,’ I called.
I intended to follow her but my bare foot stood on an open nail. The sharp metal entering my foot put me in mind of a fork sticking a pickled onion. I had to cry out. Hopping up and down on the landing I could just hear Hortense calling back to me. ‘You disgust me, Gilbert Joseph.’
Come, I finally get it. She had weighed up the evidence and reached the same conclusion as the fool husband. The brown baby in Queenie’s arms must be the child she had for me. Cha! Am I the only black man in this world? Why everyone look to me? I have been back in England for only seven months. Why no one think to use their fingers to count out that before they accuse?
‘Hortense, let me explain,’ I called to her. Man, as soon as I said that I wanted to stuff the words back in my big mouth. It did not sound good. I had nothing to explain. Only men that have guilt have something to explain. ‘It not my pickney, Hortense. I only been seven months here with . . .’ I was saying before the wretched nail pricked me again and I lost most of the words to another pain-filled yell. ‘Wait,’ I shouted.
As she reached the landing by Jean’s room, Jean appeared at her door. It was late – she was dressed for work. Powdered and painted as an ugly doll. She looked on Hortense, who said a polite, ‘Good evening,’ to her, as she passed by. Then Jean turned her gaze to me, perused me curious, then threw her head back and laughed. I heard the front door shut. Where could Hortense go? She knew nobody but, worse, she knew nothing.
How long it take me to find another shoe? The only one that show itself to me is for the wrong foot. I hurried down the stairs after Hortense on two left feet. I could not see her on the street. The blasted cold misted my breath so the way ahead was hazy. Left or right? Cha, I followed my shoes – if she had gone the other way I was ready to blame them. Up towards the square I hobbled like a cripple. A man walking his dog came towards me. Only when I saw his look of terror did I realise what a fright he was beholding. A man with black skin, covered in red blood, walking ungainly in two left feet. Man, I swear, the little dog, looking on me, jumped in his owner’s arms. I thought to say, ‘Good evening,’ but was sure this man would scream once he realised I was indeed real. Who could blame him? I was a sore sight in this green and pleasant land. If I did not find Hortense soon and return once more inside someone would surely call a constable. Come, I looked like a suspect. What crime? Oh, any will do.
Then I saw her. Unmistakable even from afar. Her haughty gait swinging her white gloves like two fireflies in the dark. But she was lost. She stopped by a corner on the edge of the pavement looking to all the world like this cold dark spot was precisely the place she had left Jamaica to be. But, just like this afternoon, she looked to the left then to the right. Which way held the most promise?
This woman had no plan. No place to go. No mummy, no brother, no friend, no cousin round the corner who would hold up their arms to take her in. This was London, not a stroll in the evening air of Constant Spring. But come, let us face it, to be far from me this woman would walk off a cliff.
I thought to call to her but my voice carried on the evening air might cause her to run. I walked slowly towards her, hiding in the street-lamp shadows. Just then I saw the headlights of a car. It pulled to a stop by Hortense. I watched as the passenger door swung open. Hortense, ever polite to strangers and more innocent than that pickney newborn, leaned down to talk to the driver of the vehicle. For a few moments she was doubled, her head to one side attentive, listening. I quickened my pace and cursed the odd shoe for slowing me. Suddenly she straightened. She leaped back from the car saying, ‘No!’
Her next step bumped her into me. She screeched until I said, ‘It’s me.’ And for the first time she looked on my face with the pleasure of seeing kin. She clung to me – her head burrowing into my neck like a chastened child. Just in time I slapped the roof of the car. Grabbed the door that the driver was rushing to close and yelled at him: ‘Fuck off, man. This woman is not your whore.’
Fifty-five
Queenie
There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they’d been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care. Hold on to them unspoken for as long as you can just so your world will stay intact. But from whichever side you looked at it I owed Bernard an explanation.
I’d waited so long for him to come back. I’d resigned myself to it – taking up where we’d left off. I wasn’t the only one to make the wrong bed and I was ready to lie down in it. (I’d only used my half of it for years so no bad habit would have me hog it when he got home.) For so long I just twiddled my thumbs. I went to find a job. But a married woman working when there were deserving men who could do any job better? Go home, they told me, twiddle your thumbs the other way, missus. I’d never felt loneliness like it. (Well, maybe, just after Auntie Dorothy died.) Waking every morning, I’d get two seconds of blessed forgetfulness when I could have been anyone, before the boring leaden yearning settled about me again.
It was after dark, there was a knock at the door and I’d called to Arthur to get it. He’d been dead three years. But whenever there was a knock at night I called his name. It was daft, I know. I called it, then shouted, ‘Oh, don’t worry I’ll get it, Arthur.’ It made me feel safer. I only opened the door a crack. But even with one eye and a dim light I knew him straight away. The way he stood was casual as a cowboy. A coat slung over one shoulder, hooked on a finger. As I pulled the door wider he turned full to face me. ‘Sergeant Michael Roberts,’ I said. But he was out of uniform, dressed sharp in a dark double-breasted suit with a hat cocked jaunty on his head.
‘No, just plain ol’ Michael Roberts now,’ he replied.
Of course I invited him in. Thought nothing of it, although he stepped in sheepishly, checking around him as if someone might jump out shouting, ‘Boo.’ He hadn’t died, as I’d sometimes wondered. No, nothing like it – he filled the parlour, every inch of it, with life.
‘You are alone?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘Only I thought I hear you call out – your father-in-law?’
‘No.’ I turned my face away from him in case a tell-ta
le blush called me liar.
‘Your husband?’
‘No.’
Slowly his playful picture-house grin lit his face up like limelight. And she was gone. That Mrs Bligh. That thumb-twiddling old drudge who’d not long finished her washing-up. Her hands still hard from scouring soap. That grouch who’d not used makeup or scent for weeks. She took off her tatty apron and scarpered. For this woman – the one he looked at like a delicious dish to be savoured – she was handsome. She was breathtaking. The most desirable thing he’d ever seen. So exquisite he stared without a blink lest all at once she vanish.
He’d been flying a Lancaster in a raid over Germany. Got shot down over France. Plane was a blaze of fire. They scrambled to get out. Parachuting down he got split up from the rest of his crew. Kip, the pilot, went down with the aircraft. They never found either. (Franny’s sister collapsed when she was told.) Ginger got out. Michael saw him floating down to earth like a tiny cigarette match against the dark. The silk wings of his parachute were on fire. Never saw anything of him again. Michael was lucky. He even had a soft landing. Sprained ankle, that was all. Spent the next few days pulling turnips out of the ground and eating them raw. He was found eventually by a farmer. The funny thing was, it was his black skin saved him. They looked on him more as an oddity than a threat, other locals coming round to rub the colour. They hid him, then handed him to the Americans who passed him to the British in the end. And he got home. Well, back to England. Never flew again.
He’d been anxious about the raid because he’d mislaid his good-luck charm. He didn’t like to fly without it. He told me all his crew had them – a piece of ribbon from a sweetheart’s hair, a tooth from an old pet dog. Kip evidently always had a tin of corned beef with him. And Michael’s, as I thought, was that little leather wallet. The one with the photograph of the old coloured gentleman and his seated wife. And that little girl.
I was excited to tell him I’d found it, that I’d kept it for him. His lip trembled as he took this picture wallet from me. Like a little child ready to sob. But he wasn’t caught by tears. He just held it reverent as a Bible. Opening it with such caution as if the contents might flutter up and fly away. I breathed with relief as he stared a look of wistful longing at each of the pictures in turn. Because the truth of it was, I’d nearly thrown it out several times. The tatty thing only got a reprieve because it got shoved down the back of a drawer and was left there. I had thought about telling him that I’d gone to the station to find him with it. To give it back to him before his train left. And about the bomb blast that held me back. But mine seemed such a silly feeble story beside his heroic tales of derring-do I didn’t bother.
‘Are they pictures of your family?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer me for a good while. Just sitting there drinking in every shadow and crease of the photographs. I didn’t ask again because I knew he’d heard me. It was softly spoken and out of the blue when he said, ‘I lost them all in a hurricane.’ If I’d have asked any more questions, I’m sure he would have wept.
But then he surprisingly bucked up – made me quite jump. Looking up at me his roving eyes started nibbling me all over. He placed his large hand on top of mine. ‘Tell me, you ever felt the force of a hurricane?’ One by one he slipped his fingers between mine, forcing them apart while gently increasing his squeeze.
‘No,’ I said.
He put his lips against my ear his tongue lightly licking the lobe. ‘Would you like to?’ He bit me.
And I said, ‘In Herefordshire, Hertfordshire and Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen.’
Three days and three nights he stayed with me. We kept inside, living like mice. I would scuttle around trying to make us something to eat – avoiding windows and their inquisitive light. Then I’d bring it back to him on a plate. Bread and jam mostly. We’d eat it in bed like newly-weds. Feeding it to each other, before licking the sticky corners from each other’s mouth and wriggling about to get rid of the crumbs.
But I knew it wouldn’t last (and not only because the jam had run out). He was on his way to Canada. Toronto. He’d trained there and talked of it, throwing his arms wide to demonstrate the open skies, the endless vistas of this wondrous vast place. No small island that, only needing a few fingers and a cupped palm to describe it. He didn’t want to go back to Jamaica where he came from. Each time I asked why, he smothered the answer with kissing. Until he finally snapped at me, ‘Why are you so concerned? Mind your business, nah?’ And sulked – crossing his arms, closing his eyes. I had to tickle his toes with my hair just to see him smile again.
I dreamed of him begging me to go with him to Canada (not just me, all the Queenies did). We knew my answer – I would have gone. Locked up the house, waved the neighbours goodbye and started a new life. But he never asked. And neither did I. He left on a Monday morning at nine o’clock. I watched him walk away, hoping for a whiff of hesitation – an over-the-shoulder glance that expelled a sigh. But with his coat casually thrown over his shoulder, his hat cocky, his gait was as purposeful as a fleeing thief.
I didn’t kid myself that Michael loved me, that I was his best girl or anything soppy like that. He had nowhere to go in London while he waited for his ship to sail. I was a piece of luck – no more, no less. A lonely pretty almost-widow to spend his last nights with. But I didn’t bloody care. I knew I was pregnant. If that miserable doctor I’d seen before the war was right, then I had to be. They might not strictly have been conjugal relations but, by God, I blinking enjoyed them.
I was so sick, though, my precious rations floating in the toilet every morning and every night. I wanted rid of the baby at first. I bound myself in an old roll of bandage I found in a drawer. Holding my breath to squeeze in the unwelcome swelling. I wrapped it tight as a mummy, round and round, until bending to put my shoes on took most of a morning. I even had to encase my breasts, once they resembled two barrage balloons. I wanted it kept from nosy-parkers – Mr Todd and his horrible sister. Nudging, pointing, whispering. ‘What a how d’you do? Poor Bernard, what did that blessed man do to deserve her? The darkies are bad enough but now an illegitimate child. Whatever next in that house of ill-repute?’ I wasn’t ashamed, I just didn’t want prying eyes making it sordid.
I’d hump things round the house – a chest-of-drawers from one side of a room to the other, a wardrobe that simply had to be taken up two flights of stairs. The heavier the better. And in between I’d jump the stairs – three at a time to the top and two at a time to the bottom. Every bath I ran was so hot I feared I’d blister. But none of it worked. I cursed those bloody old wives – could they get nothing right? Then one night as I was lowering myself into the bath for another scalding, I felt a tiny kick. A little bounce inside me. A tiny foot protesting that our bath was too hot. A little elbow nudging to ask me what I was doing. I turned the cold tap on in panic. Lowering myself down in cool water I swear I heard it sigh. I felt queasy thinking that the little mite was probably scared of me. Who else alive was there who could protect it? I was so sorry and I told it so over and over.
I was lucky – I never got too big. Never lumbered around like some I saw, gasping for breath leaning on a lamp-post or rubbing at an aching back. At night in bed I’d unwind the binding – let the little mite breathe – my belly puffing up like a fat man’s. And I’d talk to it, tell it my plans. Perhaps we’d go to Canada on the money I’d saved from the rents. I could make up a tale of its hero father slaughtered in the war. What was to stop us? The war had been an enormous bomb blast. Everything thrown up, tumbling, turning and scattering high into the air. Now it was over; the whole lot was coming back down to land. But it was all settling in different places. A mother with a lone child – a little unusual we might be, but not wicked.
However, Bernard crashing back to earth soon put an end to that fancy.
There are some words once spoken split the world in two. Before you say them and after.
He listened to me right through. Never saying a
word. Never interrupting or wanting a clarification. Never tutted, shook his head. Never once exclaimed ‘Oh, Queenie, how could you?’ He sat across from me at the table smoking a cigarette, gently tapping off the ash. But his eyes never lifted to look at mine, not even a glance. When I’d finished – when there was no more worth saying – he scraped his chair back across the lino, stood up and left the room. And for the first time I was thankful that Bernard Bligh could be relied upon to have absolutely nothing to say.
Fifty-six
Gilbert
I come to dread a knock on the door. Is this the way a man supposed to live in England? If it is not the jackass from downstairs come to shake me from this room or try bloody my nose again, then who?
Kenneth. Standing before me rubbing his hands, telling me keen, oh, he has a little business proposition for me. I folded my arms then blocked the door so his eager eye would not pull the rest of him inside. ‘You listening, man?’ he say.
‘Oh, yes, I listening, Kenneth.’
‘No, man, me not Kenneth, me Winston.’
I placed me tongue in me cheek while I carried on listening to the stupidness this man have for me this time. His story start with him telling me he had come into a little bit of money. How he come by this? Some of the boys from his district back home start a pardner. He have a little saving so he join them. His turn soon come round for the hand. Now with this and some money his grandma give him from selling her land to a big-time movie star, he find he have enough to buy a house. Here, in London. Finsbury Park was the precise location, which he inform me, with a finger pointing helpful like a compass, was in north London. He carry on to tell me the place need fixing up a bit, which was the reason he could purchase it at a preferential rate.