Small Island

by Andrea Levy

‘I went to Africa when it came to Wembley.’

White people in one sentence.

It occurred to me then that perhaps white men who worked were made to work because they were fools.

‘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.’

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, man, even I get a shock: her white glove is black. ‘Everything filthy,’ she tell me. ‘Then stop touching up everything with white glove.’

This private school was run by Mr and Mrs Ryder, a married couple who had sold everything they had in America to set up the school. ‘It is for the poor people that we have been sent to do this,’ Mr Ryder told me, on our first meeting. Mrs Ryder, in her movie-star accent, remarked, ‘Someone must help these poor negro children. Education is all they have.’ Many people wondered if Mr and Mrs Ryder were aware that their school took only the wealthiest, fairest and highest-class children from the district. Or whether these polite, clean and well-spoken pupils nevertheless still looked poor to them.

‘For what is the city of Sheffield famous?’ ‘No. Test me on my understanding of geography, not this childishness.

But that is geography

Shot out and deftly caught by the nurse, these two boys, Leonard and Clinton, looked so alike I puzzled on the need for both of them to exist.

I was going nowhere near that thing. ‘What is that?’ ‘What this?’ he said, modelling it for me like it was something to be proud of. ‘This is my manhood.’ ‘Keep that thing away from me!’ I said. ‘But, Hortense, I am your husband.’ He laughed, before realising I was making no joke. The fleshy sacks that dangled down between his legs, like rotting ackees, wobbled. If a body in its beauty is the work of God, then this hideous predicament between his legs was without doubt the work of the devil.

It was the war I wanted rid of, but it was people I was losing.

‘You bring me to a house with rats?’ ‘No, they are mice. And every house in London has mice. They bombed out too, you know.’

I was not ready, I was not trained to eat food that was prepared in a pan of boiling water, the sole purpose of which was to rid it of taste and texture.

How the English built empires when their armies marched on nothing but mush should be one of the wonders of the world.

‘While on the camp you will be under the command of your own NCOs and following British military law.’ Who cared about law as long as the British were not cooking the food?

Apparently our hosts had tried every solution to their nigger problem. ‘Only one that works in this country, and certainly in the military, is segregation.’ This was apparently how everyone liked it – black man as well as white. They had a name for it – no, not master-race theory: Jim Crow!

Under the frugal, carefully combed hair that remained, an angry red birthmark blazed on his scalp, which formed the unmistakable shape of a letter B. We all knew, we other ranks, that one day when this sergeant lost all his remaining hair to gravity and the wind, the word ‘bastard’ would be revealed written over the top of his bald head in that blushing stain. It was the devil who scorched that word on to his skull in case there was ever any doubt as to the character of this puff-up, dogheart man.

A college-educated Lenval wanted to know how so many white people come to speak so bad – low class and coarse as cane cutters.

And let me not forget James, perplexed as a newborn, standing with military bearing surrounded by English children – white urchin faces blackened with dirt, dryed snot flaking on their mouths – who yelled up at him, ‘Oi, darkie, show us yer tail.’

But for me I had just one question – let me ask the Mother Country just this one simple question: how come England did not know me?

It was inconceivable that we Jamaicans, we West Indians, we members of the British Empire would not fly to the Mother Country’s defence when there was threat. But, tell me, if Jamaica was in trouble, is there any major, any general, any sergeant who would have been able to find that dear island? Give me a map, let me see if Tommy Atkins or Lady Havealot can point to Jamaica. Let us watch them turning the page round, screwing up their eyes to look, turning it over to see if perhaps the region was lost on the back, before shrugging defeat. But give me that map, blindfold me, spin me round three times and I, dizzy and dazed, would still place my finger squarely on the Mother Country.

Perhaps Elwood was right when he warned me: ‘Be careful, Gilbert, remember the English are liars.’

If the defeat of hatred is the purpose of war, then come, let us face it: I and all other coloured servicemen were fighting this war on another front.

We fighting the persecution of the Jew, yet even in my RAF blue my coloured skin can permit anyone to treat me as less than a man. I turned my back on the usherette, indicated for Queenie to sit and went to take my seat next to her.

Tell me, if you build a bonfire from the driest tinder, is it the stray spark you blame when the flames start to lick?

The world out there is bigger than any dream you can conjure. This is a small island. Man, we just clinging so we don’t fall off’

You see, most of the boys were looking upwards. Their feet might have been stepping on London soil for the first time – their shaking sea legs wobbling them on the steadfast land – but it was wonder that lifted their eyes.

And why everything look so dowdy? Even the sunshine can find no colour but grey.

Only as I felt the pinching of the cold on my exposed cheek, sharp as acid, did I remember that I was in England.

This woman start vex me so I think her husband a sensible man to lose him way between here and India.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘but would you perchance have a basin that I might get a use of?’ ‘A what?’ ‘A basin,’ I repeated. ‘Sorry.’ ‘A basin to put at the sink.’ ‘A bee – to put what?’ ‘A basin.’ ‘I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

This is painful.

Now, why should this woman worry to be seen in the street with me? After all, I was a teacher and she was only a woman whose living was obtained from the letting of rooms. If anyone should be shy it should be I. And what is a darkie?

His bulbous fat hands were like great hams. Broad, pink and fleshy with stubby fingers.

BARF

‘How come bath should be said barth but fat is definitely not fart in high society?’ I asked Auntie Dorothy.

All that lily-of-the-valley scent. Hours spent waving my hair and powdering my face to porcelain perfection. Silk stockings, red lips, and hands as soft as lah-di-dah. And I was married to a man who wouldn’t have noticed if I’d come to bed in my gas mask.

The vicar at St John’s Church wondered if it was wise to want to bring a child into the world when there was almost certainly a war coming. Told me to go away and think very carefully about it. So I went to the Roman Catholic church instead and lit a candle. I knew they wouldn’t mind.

‘Is every waif and stray to end up here?’ Mr Todd asked. ’I mean, we’ve got enough Poles living here to start their country anew. Now these Cockneys. I ask you.’

Good gods, these people suck.

I remember fairgrounds – the helter skelter, the switchback – paying good money to make my face blanch, my knuckles whiten. In those days, before the war, I thought it fun to be scared witless.

‘They’re just borrowing the furniture until I can get them some. Otherwise they’ve got a requisitioned flat with nothing in it. Nothing at all.’ ‘That’s not our problem.’ ‘Oh, no, sorry, that’s where you’re wrong. Bernard, there is a war on.’ ‘I’m very well aware of that.’ ‘Oh, yeah? Well, let me tell you something, let me give you a fact – there’s thousands of people having much more of a war than you are.’

‘You there, you there,’ she called. ‘Are you responsible for this?’ I stopped for a moment until she said, ‘I want to know on whose authority those people have been put into that property.’ I began walking again, fast, as she chased after me saying, ‘I want to know the name of your superior. I want to make a complaint. I’m not happy to have those people living here. This is a respectable street. Those kind of people do not belong here. Let me tell you, there will be a great deal of trouble if they stay because I am not happy about it, not happy about it at all.’

Vintage Karens

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.

What a thing was this to wish for. That a person regarding me should think nothing. What a forlorn desire to seek indifference.

I didn’t answer. Last name I could remember being called was miserable beggar.

‘My teacher, Miss Plumtree said my cake was the best outside the tea-shops of southern England.’ ‘Your teacher taste it?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘And still she say it better than one she eat in a tea-shop.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘She tell you where this tea-shop is, because we must be sure not to go there?’

Never had I heard such a noisy quiet.