Small Island (36 page)

And yet it was she, this young Englishwoman, and not I who was dressed in a scruffy housecoat with no brooch or jewel, no glove or even a pleasant hat to lift the look a little.

Imagine my astonishment when, reaching the bustling street, every Englishwoman I look on is also attired in a dowdy housecoat. And as if the Almighty had stolen the rainbow from this place not one person was dressed in a colour bright enough to cheer my eye. All was grey. But walking through this drab, my eye began to detect colours that did amaze me. The surprising colours in the countenance of all the English people. In no book or tutoring that I had acquired did anyone tell me that so many different types of English people could be found. In Jamaica all English people had looked as my tutors at college had appeared. Their hair fair, the colour of baked bread. Their complexion red and ruddy from the sun. It was with great ease that an English person could be distinguished walking along the road from even the most high-class of Jamaican. But here now, in England, so many different complexions were placed before me that my mind became perplexed. This walk to the shops with Mrs Bligh had me looking about in confusion.

‘These are shops,’ Mrs Bligh told me.

I paid it no mind that this woman believed I could not tell that the place before me, with its window of food displayed, was a shop. Because my mind was puzzled by the woman standing beside us. Her hair was black as ink, her complexion not much lighter than my own – the colour of honey. She held the hand of a small boy with the same dark hair. Seeing me gazing on them, the boy nudged his mother and both of them turned blue eyes to stare back on me.

‘This shop is called a grocer’s,’ Mrs Bligh told me.

I nodded. It had groceries in the window, what else could it be? But I was waiting for this blue-eye-yet-black-hair woman to speak. Was she English, or foreign?

‘Come on, let’s go in,’ Mrs Bligh said to me.

As the dark woman and her son had gone in before us I was happy to follow. The dark woman perusing the counter asked the shopkeeper, ‘Have you got cheese today?’ Impeccable English, rounded and haughty. My mouth could do nothing but gape. I had never seen an Englishwoman so dark before. At home her countenance would leave many elderly Jamaican men looking about them abashed.

Mrs Bligh, seeing my gaping mouth, said, ‘In a grocery shop, you can get milk, biscuits, sugar, cornflakes, eggs, that sort of thing. Do you need eggs? Bacon? A lot of it’s still on ration but most things are here. So remember that, it’s a grocery shop.’

Now the man serving this dark woman had hair that was red. His face was speckled as a bird’s egg with tiny red freckles. Scottish. I believed him to be Scottish. For in Jamaica it is only Scottish people that are so red. But no, he too was English.

‘What can I do you for?’ he asked me directly. A red Englishman!

‘He wants to know if you’d like anything,’ Mrs Bligh told me.

I obliged her concern by making a purchase. ‘A tin of condensed milk, please,’ I asked him.

But this red man stared back at me as if I had not uttered the words. No light of comprehension sparkled in his eye. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

Condensed milk, I said, five times, and still he looked on me bewildered. Why no one in this country understand my English? At college my diction was admired by all. I had to point at the wretched tin of condensed milk, which resided just behind his head.

‘Oh, condensed milk,’ he told me, as if I had not been saying it all along.

Tired of this silly dance of miscomprehension, I did not bother to ask for the loaf of bread – I just point to the bread on the counter. The man enclose his big hand over the loaf, his freckled fingers spreading across it. I stared on him. Was I to eat this bread now this man had touch it up? With his other hand he wiped his nose as he held out the bread for me to take. I did not take it, for I was waiting on him to place the bread into a bag to wrap it.

‘There you are,’ he said to me, pushing the loaf forward enough for me to see a thin black line of dirt arching under each fingernail. It was Mrs Bligh who came and took the bread from him. Her dirty hand having pinch up my loaf as well, she placed it into my shopping bag.

Then she tell me loud for all to hear, ‘This is bread.’

She think me a fool that does not know what is bread? But my mind could not believe what my eye had seen. That English people would buy their bread in this way. This man was patting on his red head and wiping his hand down his filthy white coat. Cha, why he no lick the bread first before giving it to me to eat?

I whispered into the ear of Mrs Bligh, ‘He has not wrapped the bread.’

But she paid me no mind, so busy was she joining this shopkeeper in rolling their eyes to the heavens as I paid my money over.

Mrs Bligh was a punctilious teacher. The shop with meat in the window she tell me is a butcher. The one with pretty pink cakes is the baker. And each time she tell me she want me to repeat the word. Instead I tell her, ‘I know, we have these shops in Jamaica.’ She nod. She say good. Then seeing a shop selling fish she tell me this is the fishmonger.

But when we reach the shop selling cloth, it was I that had to ask of her, ‘Is this where you buy your material?’ For all the cloth seemed to be spread about the floor. There was little room to tread. Bolts and bolts of cloth thrown this way and that all about the place. Some of it dirty. Some of it ragged and fraying. And two old women looked to be crawling on their hands and knees through this mess of cloth while the assistant just daydream behind a counter. How the English treat their good material like this? In Jamaica, I told Mrs Bligh, all the cloth is displayed neatly in rows for you to peruse the design, the colour. When you have chosen you point to the bolt that the assistant will then take up for measuring. She understood what I was telling her but still she look surprise on me, saying, ‘Oh, do you have drapers where you come from?’

Three basins! Mrs Bligh shout for all to hear in the hardware shop, why I want three basins? So I tell her softly, one to wash the vegetables, one for the cups and plates and one for washing. No, she tell me, I only need one. ‘One will do you – just rinse it out.’ How can an Englishwoman expect me to wash myself in the same place where I must clean up the vegetables? It was disgusting to me. Surely it was distasteful to this Englishwoman? I stared dumbfounded. But one was all the shopkeeper delivered me even though I had requested three. But I paid it no mind. I thought to make note of the position of this hardware shop so I might return when this busybody woman had removed her nose from my business. But my eye was diverted by the countenance of a woman pushing a child in a pram.

Never in my days had I seen such a white woman. The hair curled upon her head put me in mind of confection – white and frothy as foam. Her complexion so light, beside it paper would look soiled. Eyebrows, eyelashes, even her lips appeared to have no colour passing through them. So pale was she her blood must be milk. I could not keep my surprise within my breast. ‘That woman is so white,’ all at once came gushing from me. ‘Is she English?’ I had to ask Mrs Bligh.

‘Stop staring, it’s rude,’ Mrs Bligh whispered to me urgent. Then, looking to the woman with a sly eye, she told me, ‘Yes, of course she is.’

‘But she is so fair.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she told me.

Beside her Mrs Bligh’s complexion appeared swarthy. From the pram that this unearthly woman was pushing, a small blond child sat forward. His finger, a little chubby dart, pointed straight at me. He attracted his mother’s notice by yelling, ‘Look! She’s black. Look, Mum, black woman.’

The white woman then turned a glassy gaze on me. Who was the most astounded? For we both stared, certain we were viewing an apparition before us. She nearly pushed the pram into a lamp-post before leaning forward to admonish the pointing child. ‘Don’t point, Georgey. She’s not black – she’s coloured.’

While from the other side of the road came shouting. Loud, uncouth and raucous. ‘Golliwog, golliwog.’ It was three young men. Holding up a wall they yelled through the funnel of their hands, ‘Oi, sambo.’

‘Take no notice,’ Mrs Bligh said.

‘Are they talking to me?’ I asked her.

‘Just keep walking, Hortense.’ But I wanted to see these men’s faces. What sort of English person could call out so coarse?

‘Yeah, you, darkie. We’re talking to you.’ They moved away from the wall to stand at the edge of the kerb, waving their arms like buffoons.

Mrs Bligh was very agitated – she pulling on my sleeve as I called back to them, ‘You are rude!’ A half-eaten bread roll flew from the hand of one of them and hit Mrs Bligh on the shoulder of her ugly coat.

‘Just keep walking, hurry, please,’ Mrs Bligh pleaded. A little patch of oil was now staining the coat.

‘Look, they have dirtied up your sleeve.’ I tried to brush it but Mrs Bligh grabbed me in so firm a grip I could do nothing but follow.

We were nearly at Nevern Street – about to pass round the corner. Mrs Bligh, after regaining some composure she had lost to the ruffians, was instructing me on what she assured me was good manners. I, as a visitor to this country, should step off the pavement into the road if an English person wishes to pass and there is not sufficient room on the pavement for us both.

Not believing what my ear was hearing I asked, ‘I, a woman, should step into the busy road?’ She nodded. So I enquired of her, ‘And if there is a puddle should I lie down in it?’ She was, I believe, considering the efficacy of this suggestion when, looking up along Nevern Street, she suddenly stopped. The breath she took was so sharp it struck her chest and staggered her back. For a moment she was lifeless, the pink draining from her cheeks as if she had bled it away. Perusing the street my eye could conceive of nothing that might give so cruel a reaction. Except there was a man with his back towards us standing at the door of the house. Mrs Bligh slowly began to raise a pointing finger. But the effort of this gesture caused her to fall hard against me. I caught her but this woman was surprisingly heavy. My arms could not hold her. I had no choice but to lower her gently down on to the ground. The man now turning round was screwing up his eyes, looking to where Mrs Bligh was sitting upright on the pavement mumbling softly, over and over, ‘Bernard? Bernard?’

Thirty-four

Queenie

I’d have recognised it anywhere, the back of Bernard’s neck. Bony and scrawny like the back of a heel with his ears sticking out. Seeing me there on the pavement he came towards me. A hat. A white collar. A gaberdine mac – every button done up and the belt too. He lifted his hat when he reached me, formal, courteous, as if this was a casual meeting. And I was collapsed, sitting on the pavement because my husband whom I hadn’t seen for near five years had just approached me. And I said, ‘Bernard. You’ve been away a long time.’

And all he said was, ‘Indeed.’

Just that. In-bloody-deed.

The last time I had seen the back of my husband’s neck it had had RAF blues pressed against it. Walking down our street, off for service overseas in India. A war had been fought and won since then – the world turned topsy-turvey. He’d been missing for so long I was ready to have him officially declared dead. But there he stood, hat raised and smiling. I mean, blinking heck. So I told him, ‘Unless you’re a ghost, Bernard Bligh, I’ll be wanting more of an explanation from you than that.’

Before

Thirty-five

Bernard

We were packed like cattle on to the train in Bombay when we first arrived in India. Hundreds of troops. We walked three abreast into the station but were quickly outnumbered. Brown people all around. At my back, at my front, under my arms. Hands out. White palms begging. ‘Baksheesh, baksheesh,’ in my ear. Some held up wares – colourful cakes, drinks, trinkets of all kinds. Others had no pride, wanted something for nothing. Behind me someone was shouting, ‘Please, sahib, my mother and father dead, rupees.’

To my right a father was trying to sell his daughter to a Tommy, ‘Pretty girl – very clean, sahib.’

Children, who should have been in school, ran at my feet, hardly clothed. Eyes as black as apple pips. Some so young they could barely walk. No parents there holding them back from being trampled under a large man. Nothing for it but to walk on through. Shrug it off as best I could. No thought of causing offence. These people stank. Body odour was masked by sweet, sickly, spicy scents.

Confusion had me bewildered. Our chaps calling out, wanting to know which way to go, ‘Oi, oi – over here.’

Groups of carnival-coloured natives gesticulating with arms as skinny as sticks. Jabbering in mysterious tongues. ‘Good worker, sahib. No trouble. Please, job, please, sahib.’ Natives’ spittle breaking on my cheek.

English cries, ‘Fall in, fall in. Move on through there.’ The squeaky wheel on a cart. The screech of a train’s hooter. The dirty laugh of an erk. ‘Her? You’re joking! Maybe with a bag on her head.’

The station was familiar. A concrete building with vaulting roof. Could have been back home – St Pancras or Liverpool Street. There was even a man in a black bowler hat bobbing through the crowd. Looked like Pa on his way to work. Except he wore a long shirt and his legs were wrapped in baggy white cotton pants. He smiled bright red teeth as he passed. Thought someone had punched him in the mouth for his cheek, impersonating a gentleman. But he was too carefree – chewing and spitting globules of red on to the floor.

‘Sahib, nice oranges, juicy.’ We’d been warned about their oranges. Boiled in filthy water to make them big. The cakes spoke for themselves. Gaudy as Christmas and speckled with black – not raisins but flies. Some chaps bought them. Flicked off the insects and tucked in. Couldn’t blame them – never sure when we’d eat again.

A native man in a uniform, transport not service, hurried us on, muttering in a language of his own. He piled kits on his back. Five, sometimes six. They bent him double as he struggled to climb the steps of the train. Offload, then back for more. Face like thunder. ‘Chatty wallah,’ chaps jeered, as he hobbled away.