Small Island

by Andrea Levy

In Gilbert Joseph’s last letter he had made me a promise that he would be there to meet me when my ship arrived at the dockside in England. He had composed two pages of instructions telling me how he would greet me. ‘I will be there,’ he wrote. ‘You will see me waving my hand with joy at my young bride coming at last to England. I will be jumping up and down and calling out your name with longing in my tone.’ It did occur to me that, as I had not seen Gilbert for six months, he might have forgotten my face. The only way he would be sure of recognising his bride was by looking out for a frowning woman who stared embarrassed at the jumping, waving buffoon she had married.

Eustace White informed me bluntly that he was not meant to take passengers in the newspaper’s van and only did so to supplement his income so he might have money to pay for the treatment of his mother’s eye complaint. Going on to explain the past, present and future of this eye condition in unnecessary detail for the rest of the long journey. By the time we arrived in Kingston my eternity had been lived listening to this man – I was convinced I had had no other life than that which took place on the upturned bucket in the Daily Gleaner van.

Now, the building I was standing in had, at a guess, taken only a few minutes to erect. Stuck together with chewing-gum, the only thing separating me from the American army officers was a wall made from a thin piece of board no thicker than the cover of a book. Perhaps if I had been standing in the room with them at the time, the substance of the exchange might have differed a little but let me assure you its audible clarity would not.

‘So you’re not from America?’ ‘No, I’m British.’ ‘Yes, sir, British, and so is your mother?’ he mumbled, in a hesitant way that made me wonder whether anything I was saying was going into his head or merely circling around it searching for somewhere solid to land.

I had been in England long enough to know that my complexion at a door can cause – what shall I say? – tension. When I was new to England all the doors looked the same to me. I make a mistake, I knock at the wrong one. Man, this woman come to the door brandishing a hot poker in my face yelling that she wanted no devil in her house. ‘Since when was the devil in the RAF?’ I asked her.

‘I wonder if you would care to come for a walk with me tomorrow afternoon, in the park – I’ve been assured it’s to be a lovely day.’ Straight out with it like he’d been practising and had to say it in a rush or his tongue would tie. My mouth was just dropping open with the surprise so it wasn’t me who said yes, it was shouted from the back room by Auntie Dorothy.

‘The road to hell,’ my mother would tell Father, after he’d given another miner something she thought he shouldn’t, ‘is paved with good intentions.’ He’d shrug. The only paving left in London was that sort. And me at my desk diligently deferring to my pamphlet for Loss or Damage Services was laying every last blinking stone to hell and back.