‘Is it not?’
‘No, it is not. It is an island in the Caribbean.’
‘Oh, well, I’ve never been anywhere,’ I said quickly.
‘A person who has never travelled still believes their mother is the best cook. Do you like your mother’s cooking?’ His face warmed with a smile.
‘Not much.’
‘Then you must have made a journey somewhere.’
‘Don’t you miss your family?’
‘I have no family in Jamaica. My mother and father are dead. There is no one else.’
‘No sweetheart?’ His gaze once again turned to mine. Feeling awkward I said, ‘You must miss being among your own kind.’
‘My own kind?’ He frowned but his eyes never left me.
‘I mean you’re a long way from home.’
He came and knelt on the floor beside me resting his elbow on the edge of my armchair. I felt his leg gently touch my foot. ‘We have bird in Jamaica,’ he said, softly as a bedtime story. ‘A humming-bird – our national bird.’ His breath was on my cheek. ‘It is very small but beautiful – blue, green, purple, red – every colour you can see in its tiny feathered body. And when it flies, its wings flicker so fast your eye cannot see them. It hovers – its wings beating to hold it still – while, steady as a man with a gun, it sticks its long yellow beak into the flower to feed . . .’ His hands made tender movements close to my face – his fingers the fluttering wings, his pinched lips the still beak. ‘One time in London during the Blitz, everywhere I look is devastation. But then you know what I see?’ His hand floated up high. ‘A humming-bird. In the middle of rubble and bricks, a humming-bird. In the buses and bustle of a city, a humming-bird. Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square and a humming-bird. I thought my eye was playing trick on me – too long flying in this war. But not only I saw.’ He was mesmerised – staring at our ceiling as if that pretty bird was flying near our cornice and coving, and pointing so I might see it too. ‘A humming-bird in London. I watched that bird like I see an old friend. It looked dowdier in this grey British light – no sun to sparkle it up. But there it was so far from home and so happy to have the chance to sample the nectar of English flowers.’ And as his hand fluttered downward, his fingers delicately caressed my hair.
Twenty-nine
Queenie
It wasn’t me. Mrs Queenie Bligh, she wasn’t even there. This woman was a beauty – he couldn’t get enough of her. He liked the downy softness of the blonde hairs on her legs. Her nipples were the pinkest he’d ever seen. Her throat – he just had to kiss her throat. This woman was as sexy as any starlet on a silver screen. The zebra of their legs twined and untwined together on the bed. Her hands, pale as a ghost’s, caressed every part of his nut-brown skin. She was so desirable he polished her with hot breath – his tongue lapping between her legs like a cat with cream. It wasn’t me. This woman watching his buttocks rise and fall sucked at every finger on his hand. She clawed his back and cried out until his mouth lowering down filled hers with his eager tongue. It wasn’t me. This woman panted and thrust and bit. And when he rolled her over she yelped wickedly into the pillow. Mrs Queenie Bligh would never do such a thing. That one, Mrs Bligh, usually worked out what she could make for dinner during sexual relations with her husband. But this woman, if it hadn’t been for the blackout, could have lit up London.
I’d felt him leave me in the night. With me naked under the slovenly bedclothes, the side of the bed that he’d heated so nicely gradually grew stone cold. I knew Michael, and the other two, were all down to catch an early train in the morning – they’d asked about the best route to the station. It wasn’t long before they were all jumping the stairs and slamming their way out, back to their squadron for more active service. But there was a gentle knock on my bedroom door before they left – once, twice. It even opened a crack before it was carefully shut. It seemed so feeble to me just to say a simple goodbye. Truth of it was, Michael Roberts deserved a fanfare with trumpets and dancers. But with Arthur waking me so urgently it did occur to me that perhaps I was wrong – that there was still a woolly-haired black head or a foot with five nigger toes where my buttoned-up, pyjamaed husband should have been.
‘What is it, Arthur?’ I asked. There are times when his eyebrows just will not do. Like a dog trying to get his master to come to rescue the kid down the well, I had to guess what these grunts and pointing fingers and head-flicking movements meant. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ I finally snapped. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your voice, Arthur – can’t you just bloody well say it for once?’ A blank curtain dragged across his eager expression and I immediately regretted what I’d said. I was so sorry.
He’d found a battered leather wallet that Sergeant Michael Roberts must have mislaid or forgotten in his rush to get away. There were photographs in its tattered inside. One of an old negro man standing formally in front of a house. Looking to all the world like a chimpanzee in clothes, this lord of the manor stood behind a seated black woman with white hair and a face as grumpy as Monday morning. Another was of a little darkie girl with fuzzy-wuzzy hair tied in ribbons as big as bandages. They were like any airman’s photos, dog eared and fading with sentiment. The wallet must have fallen from his jacket when he was rummaging for his war-time weapons of seduction – his tin of ham, his orange. But there was something about its tattiness that let you know this wallet had been places. Stuffed into a pocket, jammed into a kit-bag, sheltered in a hat. It was so beloved its preciousness warmed my fingers as I held it. It might even have been his good-luck charm. I was told that most flyers had them – that they weren’t safe flying without them. This was Michael Roberts’s fortune and it had no place lying in my hand. So I dressed quickly with the idea of catching him at the station, handing it to him before it was too late. And, anyway, it was easier to find a coloured man in RAF uniform at a station than it was to spend the morning looking apologetically into Arthur’s face and finding his wanton trollop of a daughter-in-law could no longer stare him in the eye.
I was not far from the station when I heard my name being called with the urgency Bernard used when he needed a towel getting out the bath. Looking around me I swore someone was taking my photograph – the flashlight’s spark burnt spots on to my eyes. But then my legs were lifting off the ground. I could see the pavement lowering under me, feel a whoosh of air, a roaring waterless sea rushing my ears. Then everything was quiet except for a note that sang sharp and high in my head. I wasn’t the only one flying. Over there a woman, a bundle of rags, was rolling over – a cardigan, a skirt, twisting and flapping. A man, or was it a boy? making an arc, diving off a swimming-board. A silent ballet so beautiful my eyes were sucked from their sockets with the sight. Something hit me hard across the back taking all the wind from me. And then I was coming back down. Sliding down the slide near our school. Wilfred in his dead dad’s boots screeching like a girl. ‘Shut up,’ I told him, ‘you’ll wake the dead.’ Landing with such a thump – the ground is so hard in winter. ‘It’s dark. Look at the fog. What a pea-souper! Go home. I don’t want to slide again, Wilfred, and I’m out of puff now. You find your own way home. Go on, hop it. I’m going to stay here and have a little sleep.’
When I woke up, Wilfred’s sharp screeching had stopped. He must have gone home. No, Queenie, he was never there. And that wasn’t fog, that was bricks and glass and wood and soot billowing in thick folds of dirty cauliflower smoke. One of my shoes was gone, my coat was ripped, and my skirt was up round my waist, knickers on view for anyone who wanted a look. Crunchy slivers of glass were in my hair. The taste of blood was in the corner of my mouth.
Perhaps I was dead. My back was against a wall, slumped where I’d fallen, unable to move, watching silently with an angel singing in my ear. A doll falling slowly from the sky towards a tree: a branch stripped of all its leaves caught the doll in its black spikes. A house had had its front sliced off as sure as if it had been opened on a hinge. A doll’s house with all the rooms on show. The little
staircase zigzagging in the cramped hall. The bedroom with a bed sliding, the sheet dangling, flapping a white flag. A wardrobe open with the clothes tripping out from the inside to flutter away. Empty armchairs sitting cosy by the fire. The kettle on in the kitchen with two wellington boots by the stove. And in a bathroom – standing by the side of a bath, caught by the curtain going up too soon on a performance – a totally naked woman. A noiseless scream from a lady who was gazing at the doll in the tree that dangled limp and filthy in a little pink hat. The lady landing hard on her knees started to pray, while a man in uniform turned slowly round to vomit.
But surely the dead don’t feel pain, that’s the whole point. Population, that’s what I was. Smouldering like a kipper, I was one of the bombed. If it was a doodlebug I hadn’t heard its low moaning hum. Hadn’t had time to plot where it was going to come down. But surely I’d been walking among houses? A woman had called out from a window, ‘Herman, get in here,’ and I’d thought, How common. The boy running past me had made a face as he went by. And a tabby cat was stretched on a step. Too everyday to remember but surely there were people walking, looking at watches to see if they were late for a train, arm in arm, carrying bags? There was an old man reading a paper and a pub on the corner with a sign that swayed. Where had they gone? Now it was all jagged hills of wreckage, crumbling, twisting, creaking, smoking under far too much sky. There was only this bleak landscape left.
‘Can you get up, love? Can you hear me? Can you get up, missus? Are you all right? Can you move?’ A man’s face was very close to mine, breath as foul as a dog’s. I could only just hear him but I knew what he was saying – I’d said those sort of things so many times myself. I pointed in case no one but me had seen the naked woman in the bathroom. He looked round. ‘Don’t you worry about that, we’ll take care of that young lady. Let’s see if you can move. Tell me your name. Can you tell me your name?’
I said, ‘Queenie,’ at least I thought I did.
‘Can you hear me, love? What’s your name?’
‘Queenie.’
‘Right, Queenie, let’s try to get you up. You don’t look too bad. I’ve seen worse turned out of pubs on a Saturday night. Up you get.’
Three men were putting up a ladder, trying to find a footing for it in the quicksand of rubble. While the naked woman – her dark pubic hair a perfect triangle – stared out from the shattered room as if a bit puzzled as to why she was now so cold.
‘Can you walk to the ambulance? Course you can.’
Bits of me that should have slid easily together cracked so painfully I needed oiling. Glass sprinkled down from me as constant as a Christmas tree shedding its leaves. One of the men started up the ladder – he trod each rung as dainty as if it were mined.
‘Come on, Queenie, can you walk? Don’t you worry about what’s going on there, that’s being taken care of. You just watch where you’re walking.’
The man was with her now, up there in the once-private bathroom, beckoning her to come to him, to step to the ladder. But she stood like stone, unwilling to admit there was anything amiss. He tested the sheared floor, bouncing on it gently, then stepped off the rungs. When he reached her he wrapped his coat round her urging her to put her arms into the sleeves. She obeyed like a sleepwalker.
I took four steps, the man helping me along. I knew it was four steps because every one was as difficult as for a newborn. At first my ankle wobbled. My shoeless foot was lacerated. On the third step I almost tripped. It was on the fourth that my torn naked foot landed on something soft. Looking down, I saw I had stepped into the upturned palm of a hand – the fingers closing round my foot with the reflex of my weight. I could feel its warmth coming up through my sole. ‘Sorry,’ I said, expecting to hear a cry of pain.
‘Just keep your eye on that ambulance, that’s where we’re going. Queenie, can you hear me? Can you hear me? Come on, love – not far now. We’ll soon have you nice and safe.’
The hand was wearing a gold ring, clothed in a blue woollen sleeve, but lying there attached to no one. My foot was being cradled by a severed arm that merely ended in a bloodsoaked fraying.
So many people at the hospital told me I was lucky. A nurse, a policeman, even a little old woman with an oversized white bandage over one eye said, ‘Never mind, it could have been worse.’ Some cracked ribs, a sprained wrist and a cheek swollen to the size and colour of an overripe plum. After a rocket attack – yes, I suppose that was blinking lucky.
‘I’ll be all right, I’ll be all right,’ I kept telling Arthur. He fretted round me like a mother. He fetched tea, then sat close, watching my hand trembling the cup up to my chin. I had to put it down before too much was spilt. He brought a cloth, gently wiped it round my face. He then placed the cup in my hand again. This time his hand, for once steady as a rock, enfolded mine, bracing it until the warm sweet drink was safely in my mouth.
‘Bit of a turn-round, eh, Arthur?’ I said. I wasn’t lucky, I was pathetic. Years of war, all those bombed-out people who could joke and smile at me with a steady gaze just after they’d had everything wiped out, and here was I, shaking so much that an old shell-shocked veteran had to help me get tea to my lips.
‘Trust me, eh, Arthur, to get killed when the war’s nearly won. Funny, really, when you look at it like that. Don’t you think it’s funny? Eh, Arthur, do you think it’s funny?’
He had to help me to bed, walking me up the stairs – I was an invalid.
‘I heard someone call my name. Just before the blast someone called me. Who was it, d’you think? Do you think it could have been Auntie Dorothy or my little brother Jimmy, warning me, you know, from beyond?’ I didn’t ask him if he thought it was Michael seeing me in the street, although I wanted to. But Arthur was tucking in the bedclothes and plumping pillows that still had an improper whisper of Michael Roberts on them. I couldn’t do up the buttons on my nightdress, my fingers were all quivering thumbs. ‘Come on, Queenie, pull yourself together,’ I said. Arthur, sitting me on the edge of the bed, carefully did them up for me. ‘Thank you,’ I told him. He tucked me in, swaddling me tight enough for an anxious baby. Then, lowering his head, he slowly moved towards me. And I knew he was going to kiss me. But he was going to kiss me on the mouth. I turned my head to the side. He hovered, fearful as a lover gone too far. Softly, slowly, his lips opened.
‘I would die if anything happened to you,’ he said, one careful word at a time.
‘Arthur, you spoke.’ His voice, deep like Bernard’s, was posh as the BBC. I was as stunned as if the wardrobe had told me it could take no more clothes. ‘You spoke. You can speak.’ I waited, wanting him to say something else. Talk to me. All those things he’d seen he could tell me now. Explain how it was for him. What he felt, what he thought. Recite me a poem, perhaps. But he didn’t – he just leaned forward again, this time to kiss my forehead. And I couldn’t help it – I started to sob. Bring me back the blinking chiming clock, the knitting needles going clack, clack, clack, and Bernard pulling his chair closer to the wireless before giving me a tut. I had had enough of war. Come on, let’s all just get back to being bored.
‘Don’t leave me,’ I told Arthur. I opened the covers for him to get into the bed with me. But he tucked them back, then pulled the chair up beside me and sat down. Silently.
1948
Thirty
Gilbert
If the Almighty, perusing that list in the celestial book, was to have told me, ‘One day, Gilbert Joseph, you will be pleased that by your name, in the list of achievements, is written only the one word . . . driver,’ I would have had to tell the deity, delicate but firm, that He was mad. But, as ever, the Almighty in His wisdom proved to be right. Come, let me tell you how. See me now. I am dressed no longer in my RAF uniform of blue but still, from the left, from the right, this West Indian man is looking just as fine in his best civilian suit. In my hand I have a letter of introduction from the forces labour exchange concerning a job as a storeman. I take it to the office of the
potential employer.
I enter and am greeted by an Englishman who smiles on me and shakes my hand. ‘Come in. Sit down,’ he tell me. A cup of tea is brought and placed before me. All good signs – I have the job, I comfort myself. The man takes up the letter to read the contents. Everything is in order. ‘So, you were in the RAF?’ he ask.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I was in the RAF. Where were you stationed?’ There then followed a short conversation about those days, before the man said, ‘Myself, I was in Falmouth.’ For the next hour I am having to shift delicately on my seat and pinch myself so my eyes do not close, while this man acquaint me with his time on radar. In a pause between his breaths I shrewdly remind him of the job I had come to see him about. Was it to be mine?
‘No, sorry,’ he say.
His explanation was that there were women working in the factory. Not understanding his meaning I said that I did not mind. He smiled at this and then told me, ‘You see, we have white women working here. Now, in the course of your duties, what if you accidentally found yourself talking to a white woman?’ For a moment the man sounded so reasonable, so measured, I thought him to be talking sense.
‘I would be very courteous to her,’ I assured him.
But he shook his head. He wanted no answer from me. ‘I’m afraid all hell would break loose if the men found you talking to their women. They simply wouldn’t stand for that. As much as I’d like to I can’t give you the job. You must see the problems it would cause?’
Once my breath had returned enabling me to speak again, I asked him why he could not have told me this an hour before when I still had feeling in my backside. He tell me he wanted to be kind to an ex-serviceman.
Another office I am invited into, the man ask me if I am a Christian. Let me tell you, after a few weeks back in this after-the-war England, God slipping from me like a freshly launched ship. But I say yes. The man start praying among the telephone and blotting-pad. He invite me to join him. I need the job so I lower my head. At the end of praising the Lord together he tell me he cannot employ me because his partner does not like coloured people. I nearly knock him into an early meeting with the Almighty when he called on God to bless me as I left.