Small Island (35 page)

The man was fussing again, looking on his plate as if all that was odious rested there. Everything I do in this sorry place he find fault. I move his suit from the wall. All day it hang flimsy there – this jacket and trouser like the trace of a man. And it watch me. Each time I catch this empty suit in my view, I swear, an arm would move or a leg would wiggle. But when I turn on it sudden it would stop. I placed the garments in the chest of drawers so it could no longer menace me. Why I touch his suit? His suit will crease. That is his best suit. So vex is he his bottom lip stick out far enough for me to wipe a postage stamp on it.

‘I have to tidy the place,’ I tell him. But I cannot even wash the filthy floor without raising his wrath. ‘Get up, get up!’ The Lord will be my witness – this fool man was unreasonable.

‘How you don’t know what is a chip?’ he ask me. He pick up the potato with his finger to hold it up to show me. Any fool could tell it would burn him. He drop it again and blow on his hand. I tell him the Englishwoman downstairs assure me this is a chip. His eye is wide awake now. ‘You been talking to Queenie?’

It was she that inform me that a chip is a potato cut up small. Reminding me twice that it must be peeled first. So I cut up the little Irish potatoes as instructed. I have only the one little ring to cook on but I place the chips of potato in a pan of water so they might boil.

When Gilbert Joseph came in from work the cold clung to him so fierce the room shivered in his trail. He proceeded straight to the fire, not even stopping to remove his coat. He pulled up the chair in front of it and lordly placed himself down on it, blocking all the heat as sure as a stormcloud before the sun. And it is in this fireplace where I am having to cook his wretched chips. The ring of blue gas flame I am to cook on snake just in front of the fire in the hearth. I cannot get round this brute of a man to carry on my work.

‘You must move,’ I tell him.

‘Why?’ he say.

‘So I might make the food.’

He move his foot a little way to the left and say, ‘You can get by me here.’

‘No, I cannot,’ I say. ‘Can you please go somewhere else?’ But the man just suck on his teeth then lift up his legs to rest his feet on the mantelpiece above the fire.

‘You can sit on the bed until I am finished,’ I tell him.

‘I am cold,’ he say.

‘But your leg is in my way.’

He shut his eyes so he could no longer see me but his lips still pout ill-tempered. ‘You can get under my legs,’ he tell me.

‘What?’This man cannot bear to see his wife washing the floor on her knees but is content to have me limbo back and forth beneath his legs to make his food.

‘I have just come in from outside. I must warm myself up.’ He show me the path I can take under his big leg, waving his hand back and forth. ‘Plenty room to get by,’ he say.

‘Move yourself,’ I tell him. But the buffoon pay me no mind except to budge his leg to rest a little higher. Soon he is snoozing there on the chair – his head lolling on his hand, his mouth gaping. While I am left crawling under his legs like a cringing dog, carrying a pan of water. Ducking beneath his foot with the chip potato. Crouching to stir the pot. And twisting misshapen to see it is cooking right.

I had to shake him awake when the food was ready. And as he stirred he gaze on me as if he had never before beheld me.

‘You will take off your coat now?’ I ask him.

‘No,’ he say. And again he say no when I ask him to come to the table to eat.

‘The proper place to eat your food is at the table.’

‘You can eat where you want, Miss High-class. I am too cold to move.’ He just hold out his hand for the plate. Then looking on the dinner before him he say, ‘What is this?’ But I paid him no mind. ‘Hortense, what kind of meal you call this?’

The Englishwoman downstairs tell me that the English like to serve chip with egg. This was pleasing to me because I had learned at college to cook an egg like the English do. Four minutes in boiling water. So I had served up Gilbert the chip potato with the egg. I thought to take the shell from the egg but I had in mind to watch how this man I had married would eat the egg. It was in domestic science that Miss Henry had showed we girls the proper way to eat an egg. Sliced across the top with a knife. On no account were we to tap the egg with a spoon to remove the shell, and only the uncouth could be found dipping a slice of bread into the yolk.

‘What is this?’ he say again. All the while this egg is rolling round on the plate.

‘It is chips with an egg,’ I tell him.

He gaze on me inscrutable for a long while, only his breath in motion. ‘You can’t cook at all, can you?’ he finally say.

‘Eat up,’ I tell him, ‘before it gets perishing.’

He lower his head, stroking his hand down his chin before saying, ‘What?’

‘How long you been in this country and you don’t know what is perishing? Cold. Eat up before it get cold.’ The man start to mumble and I know it is the Lord’s name he is taking in vain.

‘You can’t even cook a simple thing like chips.’

‘You are ungrateful, Gilbert Joseph.’

‘Chips is fried,’ he say, flicking angry at the potato on his plate.

‘Well, how can I do anything with your big leg in the way?’ I tell him.

‘Look,’ he shout. ‘I take away me leg. You know how to cook chips now?’

I averted my gaze from him, left my plate at the table and went to sit on the bed. This vile man would not make me cry. This uncouth ruffian would see no tear in my eye. And he cannot even see how I tidy up this wretched little room. How I make up the bed with the pretty bedspread. How I clean the sink, wash the walls. He does not notice that his precious armchair is resting on a wood box and not the Holy Bible. He does not see the plates cleaned and tidied away. The rug beaten. Or the cloth on the table. Just his big body blocking all the heat of the fire with steam rising from his coat like a dragon. It was I who should complain over this intolerable situation. But it was he that look over on me to sigh long and hard.

‘I can show you how to make chips,’ he say.

‘I do not need any help from you, Gilbert Joseph,’ I tell him.

‘Have it your way, Miss Can’t Cook.’ He start to crack his egg as I had imagined he would. He smash the shell into little pieces to pick it off. But as the heat began to rise from the egg even I can smell it is bad. It renk like a gully in the heat. He jump up. ‘Man, this egg gone bad!’

‘It is not my fault you have a bad egg. I did not buy the egg,’ I tell him. He throw the plate to the floor spilling the potatoes and the stinking runny egg over the beaten carpet.

‘I can take no more of this!’ he yell, for everyone in the house to hear. And he charge from the room slamming the door so ferocious the armchair collapse sideways off its box.

Thirty-two

Gilbert

Perhaps Elwood was right. ‘Stay in Jamaica,’ he had begged me. ‘Stay and fight till you look ’pon what you wan’ see.’ My boyhood friend, what was passing before his eye now in that Caribbean island? Sitting on the veranda, he was watching the Jamaican sun as, lowering, the sky glowed purple orange blue pink. Sucking on soursop, the juice sticky on his chin, the flesh fat between his teeth. The cicadas singing, he raise his legs on to a foot-rest and sigh. In the cooling evening heat his hand flop down to take up a glass of his mummy’s honeyed ginger juice while he calls for his friend Aubrey to join him. And the two men share a joke sitting there resting on the veranda after a long day. Chatting while supping, soon they are shaking laughter into the sweet Jamaican night air.

And you know what the joke was that they share? Gilbert Joseph. It was I that was their merriment. See me walking in the London street with the rain striking me cold as steel pins. My head bent low, wrapping my arms round me to keep the cold from killing me. With nowhere to go but away from a wretched room and a woman I marry so I might once more sail the seas to glory in indignity and humiliation in the Mother Country. But it is not only I that make them chuckle. All we ex-RAF servicemen who, lordly in our knowledge of England, had looked to those stay-at-home boys to inform them that we knew what to expect from the Mother Country. The lion’s mouth may be open, we told them, but we had counted all its teeth. But, come, let us face it, only now were we ex-servicemen starting to feel its bite.

Take Eugene. This mild-mannered man was going about his business when an old woman trip on the kerb and fall down in front of him. He rush to her side, his hand out for her to hold. On his lips were soft words spoken. ‘Let me help you up – come, are you hurt?’This nice old English lady took one look at him and scream. She yell so bad the police came running. Eugene was taken away. The charge? Attacking an old lady. In the police cell Eugene sweat himself scrawny before this old woman clear up the matter.

A devout Christian, Curtis was asked not to return to his local church for his skin was too dark to worship there. The shock rob him of his voice.

Louis now believed bloodyforeigner to be all one word. For, like bosom pals, he only ever heard those words spoken together.

And Hortense. Her face was still set haughty. But how long before her chin is cast down? For, fresh from a ship, England had not yet deceived her. But soon it will. All us pitiful West Indian dreamers who sailed with heads bursting with foolishness were a joke to my clever smirking cousin now.

Regret had its hand clasped to my throat as I walked that London street, my desire smothered and choking. Then I heard someone call after me. I took no notice. A shriek of surprise: what coloured man in England would look to stare when they heard that? But it came again this time with words, ‘Excuse me, excuse me.’ And the clip clop of a woman’s footfall along the pavement. I stopped and, turning slowly, I saw a tiny woman approach me. Out of breath, smiling, she looked up in my face. Not a young woman – forty, fifty, it was hard to tell in the street-lamp glow. But her smile was wholehearted. ‘You dropped this, I think,’ she said. It was a black glove. I was not sure it was mine but beguiled by the gesture I took it from her.

As I parted my lips to thank her no words came. Trying again I could only mouth the gratitude.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked me.

A tear was on my face. I could feel its damp, itchy path creeping down to my chin. I wiped it away.

Watching me, she took her hand and laid it on my arm. ‘Are you all right? You look cold. It’s a cold night.’

‘Yes,’ I said. The place where her hand was on me was melting with the warmth of that gentle touch.

‘Here,’ she rummaged around in her pocket and pulled out a little bag, ‘have one of these.’ The bag was full of sweets. She pushed it towards me, ‘Go on.’ I put my hand in this little bag. The contents was one sticky hard lump. She pulled the bag away again. ‘Oh, they’re all stuck together. Sorry.’ And she started fiddling with the bag – cracking and poking it with her fingers. ‘It’s cough sweets, they always get stuck together. Sorry. But they warm you up.’ Once more she handed me the bag. I took one. ‘Have one for later if you like.’

‘No, one is fine,’ I told her.

‘Right, I’m going home.’ She put her own hand into the bag, then the sweet into her mouth. It bulged in her cheek. ‘It’s the only place to be tonight,’ she said, with some difficulty owing to the confection. She touched my arm again, saying, ‘And cheer up, it may never happen,’ then clopped off down the road.

How long did I stare at that sweet in my hand? Fool that I am, I took a handkerchief from my pocket to wrap it. I had no intention of eating that precious candy. For it was a salvation to me – not for the sugar but for the act of kindness. The human tenderness with which it was given to me. I had become hungry for the good in people. Beholden to any tender heart. All we boys were in this thankless place. When we find it, we keep it. A simple gesture, a friendly word, a touch, a sticky sweet rescued me as sure as if that Englishwoman had pulled me from drowning in the sea.

I carried two portions of fish and chips back to the room for Hortense and me. There she was, still sitting on the bed. Her face, even after this time, remained set in an ill-tempered frown. ‘See here, Miss Mucky Foot,’ I said. ‘I have fish and chips for you and me.’ Only her big eyes swivelled to my direction while her arms folded tighter across her chest. I got out two plates, which were neatly stacked in the cupboard. Unwrapping and placing the fish and chips on the plate I tell her, ‘You know what the English do?’ Of course she did not reply but I did not expect her to. ‘They eat this food straight from the newspaper. No plate. Nothing.’ I knew this high-class woman would not be able to keep her face solemn in the presence of such barbarity. Scandalised, she could not stop herself staring on me in disbelief. ‘Yes, from the newspaper! So lesson number one, Miss Mucky Foot. This is a chip.’ I offered the chip to her on a fork. She took it from me and popped it greedy into her mouth. ‘And now lesson number two. Are you listening to me carefully.’ I leaned in towards her to whisper the secret. She had her big eye on me, mesmerised as a gossip. ‘Not everything,’ I tell her, ‘not everything the English do is good.’

Thirty-three

Hortense

Mrs Bligh, or Queenie, the familiar name she desired I use, came to her door, wrapping herself in a dowdy woollen coat. I presumed she had changed her mind about the arranged excursion to the shops, for I believed this dreary coat to be her housecoat. Wishing to allay any anxiety that I might be disappointed by this alteration of plan, I told her, ‘Do not worry yourself on account of I. I shall find my way around the shops with no problem.’

I was astounded when, closing the door behind her, she said, ‘What? What are you talking about? I’m ready.’ For this dismal garment, which I had taken to be her dressing gown, was her good outside coat. Could the woman not see this coat was not only ugly but too small for her? She determined, wrestled herself in to do up the button. When she was finished this fight, she look on me distasteful, up and down. I was dressed as a woman such as I should be when visiting the shops in England. My coat clean, my gloves freshly washed and a hat upon my head. But Mrs Bligh stare on me as if something was wrong with my apparel, before telling me once more, ‘I’m not worried about what busybodies say. I don’t mind being seen in the street with you.’