Small Island

by Andrea Levy

  At last I could turn back to Gilbert and Hortense. ‘I’d have to give him away, you see,’ I told them. ‘To an orphanage.’ I took Gilbert’s hand again. This time he let me. ‘And they don’t want them, you know – the coloured ones.’ I needed to stop crying – I had to explain carefully. I gulped on the tears. ‘In the newspaper they said they were going to send all the half-caste babies that had been born since the war – sons, daughters of coloured GIs mostly – they were going to send them to live in America.’ I giggled, but God knows why. ‘Gilbert, can you imagine? You remember, don’t you? The Americans. They’d want Michael to go up to the back of the picture house.’

  Bernard turned himself away from us. And I knew why. It was the sight of me on my knees in front of these darkies. He sighed, or at least it sounded like it.

  ‘If I gave him to an orphanage,’ I carried on, ‘I’d never know about him. Never. And he wouldn’t know how much I loved him. And how all I wanted was to be a good mother to him.’They were just staring at me. I must have looked – no, I was – pathetic. ‘You might let me know how he was getting on. You might write to me and tell me. I know it’s a lot to ask.’

  Gilbert’s troubled eyes were asking all sorts of questions.

  ‘I can give you money, if that’s the problem,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Gilbert snapped. ‘Don’t sell your baby, Queenie.’

  ‘No, no, you’re right. I just want him to be with people who’ll understand. Can’t you see? His own kind. But I’ll do it any way you want to. Any way. But you have to say you’ll take him.’ Michael started to cry. I pressed both my hands together. ‘You know I’m begging. But it’s not for my sake. Honest to God, it’s not for me. I know you could give him a better life than I ever could. Don’t do it for me – please, do it for him. That’s what I’m on my knees for – my darling little baby’s life.’

  Fifty-nine

  Hortense

  I never dreamed England would be like this. Come, in what crazed reverie would a white Englishwoman be kneeling before me yearning for me to take her black child? There was no dream I could conceive so fanciful. Yet there was Mrs Bligh kneeling before Gilbert and I, her pretty blue eyes dissolving beneath a wash of tears, while glaring on we two Jamaicans, waiting anxious to see if we would lift our thumb or drop it. Could we take her newly-born son and call him our own? Not even Celia Langley, with her nose in the air and her head in a cloud, would have imagined something so preposterous of this Mother Country.

  Gilbert insisted Mrs Bligh came from her knees. He lifted her, still snivelling, from the floor, supporting her with a careful arm round her waist. And he placed her down on the settee beside me. It was not the time to talk of such things but the baby’s backside was damp under my hand. I paid it no mind. Gilbert tried to squeeze himself down on the chair between Mrs Bligh and myself but there was no room. So it was then he that took up the kneeling position.

  ‘Queenie,’ he said, with as gentle a voice as a woman might have, ‘how can you think to give up your baby?’ Those tender-spoken words caused Mrs Bligh to sob with such ferocity that the sleeping baby was once more aroused. But Gilbert’s look carried such concern that I forgave him. ‘How you believe that we would be better for your child than its mother? We are strangers to him.’ But questions were useless, for this woman’s anguish had rid her of the power to speak. Still he waited patient for her sobs to subside. When they did not, he wriggled himself once more between us on the settee so he might place a comforting arm round her shoulders. Returning the consolation, Mrs Bligh lifted her hand and placed it on Gilbert’s arm. With the vigour of a blast, that delicate touch was enough to see Mr Bligh on his feet and exploding, ‘Get your filthy black hands off my wife!’

  Gilbert was soon squaring up to this tall man. The two of them standing facing each other. ‘What is your problem, man?’ Gilbert said.

  ‘My problem is you, with your hands on my wife.’

  ‘You sure that it is my black hands on your wife that is worrying you, man?’

  ‘How dare you, you savage?’

  It was at this point that Mrs Bligh, tired of all this rough stuff, fled from the room. Leaving me alone to comfort the crying baby.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ Mr Bligh pointed a finger almost inside Gilbert’s nostril. Gilbert batted it away. While I stared down into the chasm of this baby’s mouth, where the little pink knobble at the back of his throat was wiggling with the wind of his howl.

  ‘Please mind the baby,’ I said, with the thought to calm the situation. But little notice was being taken of I or the child. Join the sweet little baby and howl, I thought, for the situation was taking another bad turn.

  Gilbert pulled himself up until, I swear, he was almost the same height as Mr Bligh. ‘Listen, man, your wife just ask us to take her baby and all that is worrying you is that a black man might think to comfort her.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more from you. Just shut your mouth!’

  ‘Well, you gonna. You gonna hear plenty more from me.’

  Mr Bligh stepped back one stride, not in fear of Gilbert but only so he might better show his disdain by perusing him up and down. ‘Why, in God’s name, would Queenie think to entrust the baby’s upbringing to people like you? That poor little half-caste child would be better off begging in a gutter!’ he said.

  Gilbert sucked on his teeth to return this man’s scorn. ‘You know what your trouble is, man?’ he said. ‘Your white skin. You think it makes you better than me. You think it give you the right to lord it over a black man. But you know what it make you? You wan’ know what your white skin make you, man? It make you white. That is all, man. White. No better, no worse than me – just white.’ Mr Bligh moved his eye to gaze on the ceiling. ‘Listen to me, man, we both just finish fighting a war – a bloody war – for the better world we wan’ see. And on the same side – you and me. We both look on other men to see enemy. You and me, fighting for empire, fighting for peace. But still, after all that we suffer together, you wan’ tell me I am worthless and you are not. Am I to be the servant and you are the master for all time? No. Stop this, man. Stop it now. We can work together, Mr Bligh. You no see? We must. Or else you just gonna fight me till the end?’

  Gilbert had hushed the room. It was not only Mr Bligh whose mouth gaped in wonder. Even the baby had fallen silent. For at that moment as Gilbert stood, his chest panting with the passion from his words, I realised that Gilbert Joseph, my husband, was a man of class, a man of character, a man of intelligence. Noble in a way that would some day make him a legend. ‘Gilbert Joseph,’ everyone would shout. ‘Have you heard about Gilbert Joseph?’

  And Mr Bligh, blinking straight in Gilbert’s eye once more, said softly, ‘I’m sorry.’ Of course, I thought, of course. Who would not be chastened by those fine words from my smart, handsome and noble husband? But this Englishman just carried on, ‘I’m sorry . . . but I just can’t understand a single word that you’re saying.’

  Gilbert’s august expression slipped from his face to shatter into tiny pieces upon the floor. He leaned down to me and took the baby from my arms. Straightening himself he handed the bundled baby to Mr Bligh. He then took my hand in his and guided me silently from the room.

  Gilbert mounted the stairs in a furious anger. The first two flights he took three stairs at a time, his feet banging loud as a giant’s foot. I decided not to keep pace with him, for still those stairs rose like an empty bookcase in front of me. But by the third flight, whether through exhaustion or concern for me, he slowed. In the quiet of the gloomy hallway Mrs Bligh’s voice could be clearly heard shouting a tormented, ‘No’. By the fourth flight Gilbert had stopped. The baby was crying. The sound encircling me appeared to grow louder as I climbed to where Gilbert stood. Both his hands were pressed firmly over his ears. As I approached him he suddenly struck out and punched the wall. Then, hopping with the pain from the ill-advised wall mashing he wailed, ‘Damn them, damn them.’ He sat down hard on the sta
ir. I rested beside him and took his throbbing hand in mine.

  ‘Your mother never tell you that a wall is hard?’ I said.

  For the briefest moment he looked on my face before hanging his head back to his boots. ‘Hortense,’ he said. ‘What can we do, what can we do? I can’t just walk away. Leave that little coloured baby alone in this country, full of people like Mr Bligh. Him and all his kind. What sort of life would that little man have? Damn them.’

  I squeezed his hand to be kind but had to stop when he said, ‘ouch’. This man was still a buffoon. Nevertheless I began. ‘You wan’ hear what I know of my mummy? A flapping skirt, bare black feet skipping over stones, the smell of boiling milk and a gentle song that whispered, “Me sprigadee,” until my eyes could do nothing but close. That is all I remember of her. As a little child I was given away too – brought up by my cousins because I was born with a golden skin.’ He placed his hand over mine and lifted his chin to kiss my cheek.

  ‘And this Michael?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, Michael Roberts, he was my cousin’s son, we grew together.’

  ‘You loved him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Jean opened the door of her room. Just enough so her nose could poke through, smell the darkies on the stairs and shut it again to laugh.

  ‘They took me from my mummy because, with my golden skin, everyone agreed that I would have a golden future.’

  ‘Well, then, a golden future you must have, Miss Mucky Foot.’

  ‘I intend to, Gilbert Joseph. That is exactly what I intend.’The baby’s crying was enfolding us again. ‘You wan’ us take the child, Gilbert?’ I asked.

  It was not hesitation that caused him to pause – it was his breath once more filling his lungs. ‘Oh, Hortense, perhaps you are right – I am a fool. And you wan’ know why? Come, I truly believe there is nothing else that we can do.’

  Gathering the baby’s things into a drawer, Mrs Bligh kissed each of the garments as she folded them away. Then she hugged her baby to her until the embrace caused him to whimper, before handing him carefully to me. Michael Joseph would know his mother not from the smell of boiling milk, a whispered song or bare black feet but from the remembered taste of salt tears. Those tears that on that day dripped, one at a time, from her eye, over his lips and on to his tongue.

  They made such a fuss with my trunk. ‘You mind if we just throw the damn thing out of the window?’ Gilbert asked me. He had managed to carry it up all the stairs those weeks ago but now it was too hard to get it down. I opened my mouth to cuss him when he said, ‘What, you still don’t know what is a joke?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I told him, ‘a joke is something that is funny.’

  It was Winston who called for Gilbert to try lifting it again. ‘What you have in there, anyway?’ Gilbert wanted to know.

  ‘I have everything I will need, Gilbert Joseph, everything I will need.’

  Oh, how they groaned and strained, banging my good trunk against the frame of the door, crashing it on the floor of the landing, and thumping it on each stair. The baby was shaken from his bed with the commotion. The drawer that was his crib bouncing around the room with each and every thud. I picked him from where he lay and hushed him with whispered words. Drowsy, he looked on my face with languid eyes before a smile briefly stretched his lips. One day this boy will want to look on a bird’s nest and I will have to lift him to show. He will torment spiders and dress up a cat. ‘Me sprigadee,’ I said, and I kissed his forehead.

  As I was about to place him back down my hand rested upon something hard around his backside. Thinking his nappy needed straightening I tried to smooth it. But it would not. Laying him down I found, stitched into his garment, a knitted pouch. To release the item I was required to search for scissors so I might cut the ties. The baby was as good as Mrs Bligh promised he would be. He fell back into his sleep as I fumbled with the pouch. Opening it I found a bundle of money tied with soft pink wool and secured with a dainty bow. Three hundred pounds in dirty notes. Never before had so much money caressed my fingertips. But then at the bottom of this bundle was a photograph. It was of Mrs Bligh taken, I was sure, in a happier time. Head and shoulders, her eyes angled to the viewer, gazing out with a gentle smile. I had never thought to enquire about the father of Mrs Bligh’s child. Who was he? Some fool-fool Jamaican with an eye for the shapely leg on a pretty white woman. Where was he? As far from her as he could run? I thought to call Gilbert to show him this bounty. But this man’s pride would surely insist that the items were returned to her. And I had something else in my mind for them. Come, I would put them to good use when they were required. Placing them in my bag I determined to keep a secret of both the money and the photograph.

  I held the baby awkward as I finally closed the door on that wretched little room. No compunction caused me to look back with longing. No sorrow had me sigh on the loss of the gas-ring, the cracked sink, or the peeling plaster. At the door to Mrs Bligh’s home I stopped. I tapped gently three times. There was no reply. I tapped again, this time calling her name. Still no one came. But with only a flimsy piece of wood between us I could feel her on the other side. The distress in a halting breath. A timorous hand resting unsure on the doorknob. She was there – I knew. ‘Goodbye, Queenie,’ I called, but still she did not come.

  Gilbert nearly knocked me from my feet as he rushed towards me. His shirt outside his trousers and buttoned up badly, panting like a dog. ‘I have the trunk in the van,’ he said. ‘Come, hurry, nah.’ He took the baby from me. I adjusted my hat in case it sagged in the damp air and left me looking comical. A curtain at the window moved – just a little but enough for me to know it was not the breeze. But I paid it no mind as I pulled my back up and straightened my coat against the cold.

  Never in the field

  of human conflict has

  so much been owed by

  so many to so few

  Winston Churchill

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following people, publications and organisations for their help and assistance with this book – they were all invaluable: Pip Mayblin, Amy Levy, George Mutton, Ray Bousfield, Jim Munday, John Collier, Philip Crawley, Leone Ross, Michael Munday, David Reading, Danny Collier, Heinz Menke, Stephen Amiel, and Katie Amiel.

  Robert Collins, The Long and the Short and the Tall: An Ordinary Airman’s War.

  Squadron Leader ‘Bush’ Cotton, Hurricanes Over Burma.

  Sam King, Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain.

  Donald R. Knight and Alan D. Sabey, The Lion Roars at Wembley. What did you do in the War, Mum? An Age Exchange publication. Robert N. Murray (Nottingham West Indian Combined Ex-services Association), Lest We Forget – The Experience of World War II West Indian Ex-service Personnel.

  E. Martin Noble, Jamaica Airman.

  Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-racial Britain.

  Ray Sansome, The Bamboo Workshops.

  Graham Smith, When Jim Crow met John Bull.

  The Burma Star Association; Kensington Central Library, Local Studies; Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon; Mass Observation Archive, University of Sussex; Post Office Heritage Archive; Colindale Newspaper Library; Prospero’s Books; Hansib Publications Ltd; and the Internet for, oh, so many little things.

  I would also like to thank the Authors Foundation for their generous financial assistance, my agent David Grossman, and Albyn Hall and Bill Mayblin for their indefatigable support and guidance throughout the writing of this book.

 

 

 
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