Small Island (3 page)

There was a moon. Sometimes there, sometimes covered by cloud. But there was a moon that night – its light distorting and dissolving as my breath steamed upon the vehicle window. ‘This is the place you want, dear. Twenty-one Nevern Street,’ the taxi driver said. ‘Just go and ring the bell. You know about bells and knockers? You got them where you come from? Just go and ring the bell and someone’ll come.’ He left my trunk by the side of the road. ‘I’m sure someone inside will help you with this, dear. Just ring the bell.’ He mouthed the last words with the slow exaggeration I generally reserved for the teaching of small children. It occurred to me then that perhaps white men who worked were made to work because they were fools.

I did not see what now came through the door, it came through so fast. It could have been a large dog the way it leaped and bounded towards me. It was only when I heard, ‘Hortense,’ uttered from its mouth that I realised it was my husband. ‘Hortense. You here! You here at last, Hortense!’

I folded my arms, sat on my trunk and averted my eye. He stopped in front of me. His arms still open wide ready for me to run into. ‘Don’t Hortense me, Gilbert Joseph.’

His arms slowly rested to his sides as he said, ‘You no pleased to see me, Hortense?’

I quoted precisely from the letter. ‘“I will be at the dockside to meet you. You will see me there jumping and waving and calling your name with longing in my tone.”’

‘How you find this place, Hortense?’ was all the man said.

‘Without your help, Gilbert Joseph, that’s how I find this place. With no help from you. Where were you? Why you no come to meet me? Why you no waving and calling my name with longing in your tone?’

He was breathless as he began, ‘Hortense, let me tell you. I came to the dock but there was no ship. So they tell me to come back later when the ship will arrive. So I go home and take the opportunity of fixing the place up nice for when you come . . .’

His shirt was not buttoned properly. The collar turned up at one side and down at the other. There were two stray buttons that had no holes to fit in. The shirt was only tucked into his trousers around the front, at the back it hung out like a mischievous schoolboy’s. One of his shoelaces was undone. He looked ragged. Where was the man I remembered? He was smart: his suit double-breasted, his hair parted and shiny with grease, his shoes clean, his fingernails short, his moustache neat and his nose slender. The man who stood jabbering in front of me looked dark and rough. But he was Gilbert, I could tell. I could tell by the way the fool hopped about as he pronounced his excuses.

‘So I was just going to go to the dock again. But then here you are. You turn up at the door. Oh, man, what a surprise for me! Hortense! You here at last!’

It was then I noticed that the Englishwoman who had answered the door was looking at us from the top of the steps. She called from on high, ‘Gilbert, can I shut the door now, please? It’s letting in a terrible draught.’

And he called to her in a casual tone, ‘Soon come.’

So I whispered to him, ‘Come, you want everyone in England to know our business?’

The Englishwoman was still looking at me when I entered the hallway. Perusing me in a fashion as if I was not there to see her stares. I nodded to her and said, ‘Thank you for all your help with finding my husband. I hope it did not inconvenience you too much.’ I was hoping that in addressing her directly she would avert her eye from me and go about her business. But she did not. She merely shrugged and continued as before. I could hear Gilbert dragging at my trunk. We both stood listening to him huffing and puffing like a broken steam train.

Then he ran through the door, saying, ‘Hortense, what you have in that trunk – your mother?’

As the Englishwoman was still looking at us I smiled instead of cussing and said, ‘I have everything I will need in that trunk, thank you, Gilbert.’

‘So you bring your mother, then,’ Gilbert said. He broke into his laugh, which I remembered. A strange snorting sound from the back of his nose, which caused his gold tooth to wink. I was still smiling when he started to rub his hands and say, ‘Well, I hope you have guava and mango and rum and—’

‘I hope you’re not bringing anything into the house that will smell?’ the Englishwoman interrupted.

This question erased the smile from my face. Turning to her I said, ‘I have only brought what I—’

But Gilbert caught my elbow. ‘Come, Hortense,’ he said, as if the woman had not uttered a word. ‘Come, let me show you around.’

I followed him up the first stairs and heard the woman call, ‘What about the trunk, Gilbert? You can’t leave it where it is.’

Gilbert looked over my shoulder to answer her, smiling: ‘Don’t worry, Queenie. Soon come, nah, man.’

I had to grab the banister to pull myself up stair after stair. There was hardly any light. Just one bulb so dull it was hard to tell whether it was giving out light or sucking it in. At every turn on the stairs there was another set of steep steps, looking like an empty bookshelf in front of me. I longed for those ropes and pulleys of my earlier mind. I was groping like a blind man at times with nothing to light the way in front of me except the sound of Gilbert still climbing ahead. ‘Hortense, nearly there,’ he called out, like Moses from on top of the mountain. I was palpitating by the time I reached the door where Gilbert stood grinning, saying: ‘Here we are.’

‘What a lot of stairs. Could you not find a place with fewer stairs?’

We went into the room. Gilbert rushed to pull a blanket over the unmade bed. Still warm I was sure. It was obvious to me he had just got out of it. I could smell gas. Gilbert waved his arms around as if showing me a lovely view. ‘This is the room,’ he said.

All I saw were dark brown walls. A broken chair that rested one uneven leg on the Holy Bible. A window with a torn curtain and Gilbert’s suit – the double-breasted one – hanging from a rail on the wall.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘show me the rest, then, Gilbert.’ The man just stared. ‘Show me the rest, nah. I am tired from the long journey.’ He scratched his head. ‘The other rooms, Gilbert. The ones you busy making so nice for me you forget to come to the dock.’

Gilbert spoke so softly I could hardly hear. He said, ‘But this is it.’

‘I am sorry?’ I said.

‘This is it, Hortense. This is the room I am living.’

Three steps would take me to one side of this room. Four steps could take me to another. There was a sink in the corner, a rusty tap stuck out from the wall above it. There was a table with two chairs – one with its back broken – pushed up against the bed. The armchair held a shopping bag, a pyjama top, and a teapot. In the fireplace the gas hissed with a blue flame.

‘Just this?’ I had to sit on the bed. My legs gave way. There was no bounce underneath me as I fell. ‘Just this? This is where you are living? Just this?’

‘Yes, this is it.’ He swung his arms around again, like it was a room in a palace.

‘Just this? Just this? You bring me all this way for just this?’

The man sucked his teeth and flashed angry eyes in my face. ‘What you expect, woman? Yes, just this! What you expect? Everyone live like this. There has been a war. Houses bombed. I know plenty people live worse than this. What you want? You should stay with your mamma if you want it nice. There been a war here. Everyone live like this.’

He looked down at me, his badly buttoned chest heaving. The carpet was threadbare in a patch in the middle and there was a piece of bread lying on it. He sucked his teeth again and walked out the room. I heard him banging down the stairs. He left me alone.

He left me alone to stare on just this.

Two

Gilbert

‘Is this the way the English live?’ How many times she ask me that question? I lose count. ‘This the way the English live?’ That question became a mournful lament, sighed on each and every thing she see. ‘Is this the way the English live?’

‘Yes,’ I tell her, ‘this is the way the English live . . . there has been a war . . . many English live worse than this.’

She drift to the window, look quizzical upon the scene, rub her gloved hand on the pane of glass, examine it before saying once more, ‘This the way the English live?’

Soon the honourable man inside me was shaking my ribs and thumping my breast, wanting to know, ‘Gilbert, what in God’s name have you done? You no realise, man? Cha, you married to this woman!’

Queenie was still standing by the open door when I dared fetch the trunk that Hortense had sailed across an ocean. ‘Everything all right, Gilbert?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I tell her.

‘What did you say her name was?’

‘Hortense.’

‘Funny name.’

‘What, funnier than Queenie?’

She gave a little laugh although I had not made a joke. ‘You’ll have to move that trunk. I need to shut the door. Someone will be away with it if you’re not careful.’

‘If they can lift it, it’s theirs,’ I muttered, before adding, ‘I moving it now, Queenie.’

My idea was to sort of slide the trunk up the stairs. Now, I could do this for one stair perhaps – two stairs if I could rest up me feet for an hour after. But this trunk lifted like the coffin of a fat man turned to stone. I would have to get one of the boys to help me. So I knock on Winston’s room.

Now, the man that answer the door was not Winston. True, him look likeWinston, him talk like Winston and him dress like Winston. But Winston was half of a twin. Identical as two lemons on a tree. This was his brother Kenneth. To tell them apart, try to borrow a shilling. Winston will help you out but pester you all over London till him get it back. Kenneth, on the other hand, will persuade you to give
him
a shilling, assuring you that he could turn it into a pound before the week’s end. Kenneth’s home was in Notting Dale with an Irish woman named Noreen. I knew this was not my friend Winston when, after I asked him to help me with my wife’s trunk, the man before me said, ‘So you tell me she jus’ come from home? You know what she have in that trunk?’

‘No, man.’

‘Come, let us open it. Mango fetching a good price. You think she have rum? I know one of the boys give me half his wage to place him tongue in a guava.’

‘Is my wife’s belongings in that trunk.’

‘Me caan believe what me ear is hearing. You a man. She just come off the boat – you mus’ show who boss. And straight way so no bad habit start. A wife must do as her husband say. You ask a judge. You ask a policeman. They will tell you. Everyt’ing in that trunk belong to you. What is hers is yours and if she no like it a little licking will make her obey.’

And I asked this smooth-tongue man, ‘How come you in Winston’s room? Noreen throw you out again?’

Silly as two pantomime clowns we struggled with this trunk – but at a steady pace. That is, until the trunk fell back down one whole flight when Kenneth, letting go, insisted that a cigarette – which I had to supply – was the only thing that would help him catch his breath. How long did it take us to reach the room? I do not know. A fine young man when we start, I was a wheezing old crone when we eventually get to the top. And there is Hortense still sitting delicate on the bed, now pointing a white-gloved finger saying, ‘You may place it under the window and please be careful.’

Kenneth and I, silently agreeing with each other, dropped the wretched trunk where we stood, just inside the door.

It is not only Jamaicans that like to interrogate a stranger with so many questions they grow dizzy. But the Jamaican is the undisputed master and most talented at the art. And so Kenneth began. The hands on a clock would have barely moved but he had asked Hortense which part of the island she came from, how many members in her family, her daddy’s occupation, where she went to school, what ship she sailed on, did she meet a man on the ship from Buff Bay named Clinton and, of course, what did she have in the trunk? Now, him never wait long enough for any answer and Hortense, although listening polite at first, gradually come to look on Kenneth like she just find him stuck to her shoe.

‘Thank you for your help, Kenneth,’ I say.

‘Oh, you have curtain up here,’ Kenneth say.

‘Goodbye,’ I tell him.

‘You goin’, man?’ him say.

So I have to give him the sign. All we Jamaican boys know the sign. When a man need to be alone with a woman, for reasons only imagination should know, the head is cocked just a little to one side while the eye first open wide then swivel fast to the nearest exit. Even the most fool-fool Jamaican boy can read this sign and would never ignore it in case it should be they that needed it next time.

‘Oh!’ Kenneth say. ‘I must be gone. And don’t forget what I tell you, Gilbert. Winston know where to find me.’

As he left the room Hortense turned to me to sneer, ‘He your friend?’

I shut the door. Now, to get back into the room, I have to step over the damn trunk.

‘What you doing?’ she say.

‘The thing in me way.’

‘That is a valuable trunk.’

‘What – you wan’ me sleep in the hallway? You no see I caan step round it. Your mummy never tell you what caan be step round must be step over?’

She rub the case like I bruise it.

‘Cha, it come across an ocean. You tell me this one skinny Jamaican man gon’ mash it up. What you have in there anyway?’

She sat her slender backside down on the trunk averting her eye from mine, lifting her chin as if something in the cracked ceiling was interesting to her. Stony and silent as a statue from Trafalgar Square. I began to crave the noise of her ‘English live like this?’ questions again.

‘You wan’ take off your coat?’ I say, while she look on me like she had forgotten I was there. ‘You don’t need on that big coat – the fire is on.’

Cha! Would you believe the gas choose that moment to run out? I know I have a shilling somewhere, but where? Searching my pocket I say, ‘Oh, I just have to find the money for the gas meter.’ It then I notice my shirt was not buttoned properly. I had not done up a garment so feeble since I was a small boy – me shirt hanging out like a vagabond’s. And now she is watching me, her wide brown eyes alert as a cobra’s. If I change the button on the shirt I will look like I am undressing. And this, experience tell me, would alarm her. So I just tuck the shirt in me pants like this mishap is a new London fashion.