Small Island by Andrea Levy

  ‘No, you have my name wrong there – Joseph is my—’

  ‘Joe, don’t pay no mind to Jon here – he don’t go in for no drawn-out tales but his mind’s busy thinking. When he does speak it’s usually worth the wait but I don’t know that he can promise you conversation.’ He giggled as Jon continued to stare straight ahead – smiling maybe, it was hard to tell in the half-light. ‘Get off the base, that’s what I said to Jon. Military as changeable as a summer breeze. One minute you got a pass, next all leave is cancelled. Well, if a mule can’t hear it ain’t disobeying. Truth of the matter is, Joe, we got a pass and two pretty women waiting for us. Lincoln girls. That’s going your way, I believe. I have to say, Joe, you’re a sight made me rub my eyes. A coloured man in a British uniform. You’re British, you say?’

  ‘British. Yes,’ I answered.

  ‘But not English?’

  ‘No, I am from Jamaica but England is my Mother Country.’

  Was it the half-light or were their baffled faces really contorting into the shape of two question marks?

  ‘Joe, I don’t altogether understand what you’re saying. Jamaica is in England and who is your mother?’ Levi asked.

  ‘No, Jamaica is not in England but it is part of the British Empire.’

  ‘The British Empire, you say. And where would that be, Joe?’

  ‘There are plenty countries belong to the British Empire.’

  ‘And you say your mother lives in one of them?’

  ‘No, Britain is Jamaica’s Mother Country. But we are all part of the Empire.’

  ‘Oh.’ Both nodded, both had not one clue what I was talking about. ‘The Empire, you say. That wouldn’t be the place in London where there was a picture show?’

  I tried explaining: ‘The British own the island of Jamaica, it is in the Caribbean Sea and we, the people of Jamaica, are all British because we are her subjects.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Jamaica is a colony. Britain is our Mother Country. We are British but we live in Jamaica.’

  ‘Well, Joe, I think I get it now. This island, Jamaica, is in the Caribbean Sea.’ Jon nodded, pensively turning to his friend. They understood. ‘So,’ Levi carried on, ‘the British have all their black folks living on an island. You a long way from home just like us.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’

  ‘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.

  ‘So, what you doing here?’ Levi asked.

  ‘I am a volunteer for the war effort. Here to help the Mother Country.’ Oh, I sounded so pompous, I know I did. As I said the words I wanted to breathe them back in but I had heard and answered that question too often. What? Did people think I was lost on my way from the canefield?

  ‘Now, Joe, I think you’re misunderstanding my meaning. My question is more what were you doing at that US Army base you’ve just come from?’

  ‘I was sent to retrieve something that had been lost in transit.’

  ‘From that base? Someone sent you to that base?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Levi paused for a moment. Then, frowning like a clever man who sees for the first time that the person he has been talking with is a fool, he said, ‘Now, Joe, I know you are a British man. And I understand that the British do things different. But – and I am picking my words as careful as a thief before a judge – but, Joe, I am presuming you do know you are a negro. And a negro on that base ’bout as welcome as a snake in a crib.’

  Look on my empty truck, I wanted to say. You see any parts there, man?

  ‘You want to come round to us. We’re out near a place called ImmingHam.’

  ‘But the parts were on that particular base,’ I squeezed in.

  ‘Now, Joe, I don’t know if what I am telling you is something you already know but seems to me someone is playing around with you. See, the American army is very strict about keeping black folks apart.’

  ‘There was a misunderstanding with my CO,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you may be right, Joe, you may be right. But the way I see it, tangled strings always got someone pulling them.’

  I had no time to contemplate who was pulling whose strings, travelling as I was through a landscape that could not be trusted.

  ‘So, will I drop you two in Lincoln?’ I purposefully asked.

  ‘No, we ain’t going to Lincoln, though it’s good of you to offer, but just before you reach there will be fine.’

  ‘But I thought you said you were meeting two Lincoln girls. I am going through Lincoln.’

  ‘Brenda and Peggy, Lincoln born and bred so they tell us. But Notting Ham is the place we will be meeting them.’

  ‘I am not going as far as Nottingham.’

  ‘We appreciate that, Joe.’

  ‘Nottingham, why Nottingham?’ I asked.

  ‘Notting Ham is where we is headed. It ain’t our day in Lincoln.’

  Our day. You see, I thought I understood those words – simple as they are. It was not their day in Lincoln. Said so matter-of-factly, only a half-wit could not follow. But a curious silence hung in the truck between us amplifying that little phrase. Soon all I wanted to know was what, in God’s name, could ‘It ain’t our day in Lincoln’ possibly mean! So I asked.

  ‘Lincoln,’ Levi began. ‘It being Wednesday, Lincoln is a white town. Lincoln is for white GIs only until next week. Now, me and Jon here don’t have a pass for next week when Lincoln would be for coloureds. So we gonna meet our Brenda and Peggy in Notting Ham. ’Cause you see Notting Ham is a black town. No whites going to be resting in Notting Ham unless they’re looking for trouble and then they’re going to get a whole heap of it ’cause Notting Ham is a black-GIs-only area. But me and Jon here, we ain’t looking for trouble – we’re looking to have a nice time with our ladies. A little dancing, something to eat and who-knows-what-else, if you get my meaning, Joe.’

  ‘But Nottingham is far away.’

  ‘Now, that’s true, but if we were in Lincoln we gonna be niggers in the wrong place. Niggers in the wrong place spend all their time watching their backs. There’s white boys and MPs just waiting to jump on our broad shoulders. No, we ain’t looking for trouble, me and Jon, we’re fixing to have a good time. I know you British do things different but US military has it all figured out.’

  ‘Your Brenda and Peggy don’t mind to travel so far?’

  They both laughed a little. ‘Now, they could rest in Lincoln. Me and Jon ain’t so come-lately to think they don’t have no white boys dangling from their chain when we ain’t there to escort them. But we coloured boys figure we must give good satisfaction and I ain’t just talking about dancing, if you get my meaning. Only our money’s the same as white boys but they’d travel anywhere for the pleasure of dangling from any part of us.’

  ‘You mean,’ I asked, ‘you are going all the way to Nottingham so you don’t mix with white GIs?’

  ‘Like I say, the military got it all figured out – Notting Ham is a black town.’

  I did not ask whether the good people of Nottingham knew their town was black or whether the quiet folk of Lincoln realised their town was only for whites. It was too ridiculous! No, what I asked instead was ‘Don’t you mind being treated like that?’

  ‘What d’you mean there, Joe?’

  ‘Treated bad.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Segregated.’

  ‘Well, Joe, I know you British do things different, but where we come from it’s the way of things . . .’

  Suddenly the puppet master awakened – Jon was wriggling in his seat. Opening his lips – a little at first then wider – his bass voice, deep as mahogany roots, steadily said, ‘But things gonna have to change when we get home.’

  At which Levi, turning to his friend, resp
onded with ‘Maybe they will, Jon, and maybe they won’t,’ before carrying on. ‘See, you British are different, you see things different. Take Jon here – he don’t mind me talking for him ’cept around women. Jon never talked to a white person ’fore he come here. He knew plenty of ’em to give him orders – take out the trash, sweep the yard – but that ain’t conversing. So – and I’m cutting this story as short as I can, Joe – me and Jon and some of the other boys get invited to this English lady’s house for tea. Not coffee, tea, always tea. ‘Pour it back in the mule’ is what I say about tea, although not to this white lady who is friendly enough to request the company of negroes. Now, she lives in a house fancy as a church. Coloured glass, big wooden doors, rooms so big your voice still running round the walls long after you spoke. We sit down on her finest chairs and this lady is asking all of us in turn how we like England. Most of us are just saying the polite thing, which is yes-very-nice-thank-you-ma’am. Only Earl thinks to say something like a complaint ’cause that is his character. He says the climate is a bit too cold, but this lady just laughs so we all laugh along too. Then she turns to Jon here and asks where his family is from. Now, at that same time as she is asking him that simple question, this pretty little white servant girl is placing the tea – in a little cup on a little saucer – into Jon’s hand. Well, Jon is so feared having a white woman waiting on his conversation that that cup began to shake on that saucer like the earth was trembling under Jon’s rear side. It was clicking and clacking, wobbling and rattling and the hot tea was spilling over the top. This lady she’s making like she don’t see anything and we boys could do nothing but watch. It was the white servant girl who moves over to Jon. She takes his hand with the little cup and the little saucer and closes her hands around them till it’s steady. Jon being grateful looks up to her and smiles and she smiles back. Well, the lady sure notices that. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she tells us, and quick as a crooked dealer with his deck she has that tea back from us. We was out of that house looking at that closing door before any of us had got a drop of that damn brew to our lips. But we was invited. A white woman invited us coloured soldiers to her house, to sit with her on her furniture, to drink with her her tea. Don’t get that where we come from. You have anything to do with white folks here, Joe?’

  ‘Yes, I share a billet with seven white men.’

  If silence ever spoke, it spoke to me then. Levi’s breath stopped. Whereas Jon came to life once more, twitching tormented in his seat, wiping a hand first across the back of his neck then dragging it slowly down his face. Studying me like he saw me for the first time, he asked, ‘How can you sleep with them in the same room?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked him. But both stared silent on me, convinced I was the strangest apparition they had ever beheld.

  With Lincoln approaching, Levi told me, ‘Just about here will be fine, Joe.’ Assuring me they would be catching a train, they wanted to be left in what seemed to me to be the middle of nowhere.

  ‘You been good company, Joe. Now we sure would like to show our appreciation for the ride but we don’t want to offend you.’

  ‘I was going your way. No problem.’

  ‘Now, you sure that is enough for you? Only you’ve been kind. And you can be sure me and Jon here are gonna eat plenty of chicken when the folks back home request the tale of the British coloured man we met. The British Empire – I’m gonna remember that. And all their coloured folks on an island in the sea.’ Both offered their hands for me to shake before they would leave the truck.

  ‘Been a pleasure meeting you, Joe,’ Levi said, for both of them.

  As I started up the truck again I found deposited on their vacated seats, six packets of Chesterfield cigarettes. Waving goodbye they pulled up the collars of their coats before finally disappearing into the lonely stretch of dark road.

  Fifteen

  Gilbert

  At first I thought, No, no, no, no, you are losing your mind, man – your imagination is deceiving you. But an hour passed and him still there. I had bought my newspaper, walked up the road past the church where the cemetery gate was half eaten with rot. I had sat on my bench noticing that two more lovers had carved their names in the wood, so deep I could feel the indentation of the love ST had for CM through the thickness of my trousers. And still him there – just in my view. Sometimes I swivel my eye to see him and sometimes I turn my whole head. Whatever, this sombre-looking man made no attempt at concealing himself. This was no infiltrator of His Majesty’s Services. If he was a spy he was bottom of the class. No Nazi man of espionage would look so conspicuously like a badly dressed Englishman – his old raincoat, plus-four trousers and tartan socks would have sent him straight to jail. But whoever he was, there was no doubt him was following me.

  But for what reason? I asked myself. Maybe he wanted to feel the hair of a coloured man. Or rub the skin of this darkie to see if rubbing it could make it turn white. Or maybe he wanted to touch me for luck. (Man, if that were true coloured men would be the luckiest men on the planet just for wiping their backside.)

  I gave him the runaround. Who knows how many times we passed that old rotting gate and that carved bench? Not me, I got too giddy to count. I took him through an empty field – just me with him ten feet behind, trailing me like a dog. This was too comical to be real. The ground was freshly ploughed; it was difficult to walk on the tumbled earth. I could hear his chest wheezing with the effort of keeping up. And hear this: softhearted man that I am, I slowed so he might follow me at a more stately pace. You ever hear anything like that? But not too slow because I needed to puff this man out. I wanted to leave him with no strength to bash me in the face or pull a knife or run at me. I wanted him so weary he could not even raise the vapour to cuss me. When I was sure I had him breathless, I stopped. Turning full-circle round on him I asked, ‘Is there something I can do for you, sir?’

  Politeness has always been my policy. It makes the good people of England revise what they think of you, if only for a second or two. They expect us colony men to be uncultured. Some, let us face it, do not expect that we can talk at all. ‘It speaks, Mummy, it speaks,’ has been called after me. Oh, yes, Mummy, it speaks and when it speaks it usually speaks with courtesy. So I asked this man, ‘Is there something I can do for you?’ adding a note of respect, which is usually implied by the word ‘sir’.

  I thought I had turned him to stone he looked so startled. He made no sound, nothing. We just stood, the two of us alone in a field waiting for the other to explain themselves. Then up came a rumbling – a low-flying plane, resonant as an earthquake. A Lancaster, I thought, that is a Lancaster coming home. From the uneven sound of an engine it was coming home injured. It flew so low I held my breath, scared it would not clear the trees at the edge of the field. One inch was all, I swear there was one inch to spare. Man, I could see holes in the side of the fuselage as big as my fist. ‘Go, boy!’ I shouted. ‘Go, boy!’ as it passed into the distance.

  When I looked back the man had gone, or so I thought. I looked to the ground and there was the man’s coat. Now, what you think of this? For a moment I thought the ground had opened up, swallowed this man and left his coat over the hole. And I am considered a sensible man. No. Slowly the man raised himself from the earth where he had thrown himself down. Lifting himself up his face was as black as mine. Of course I laughed, he looked funny this minstrel man, his white eyes blinking at me. But he was shaking, like electric volts quivered through his body. ‘Calm yourself, nah, man,’ I said. He was gyrating like a bad dancer who couldn’t find the beat. Again I said, ‘Calm yourself,’ but as those stupid words left my mouth I realised this man was not quite right in the head. He did not want a fight, he wanted a nurse.

  The aftershock of another plane boomed in the distance. The man covered his ears, his face contorting to a soundless scream. But it passed over us further away. Two thoughts went quickly through my mind. One: I was lucky there was no one else around – anyone seeing us might make
a conclusion that I was attacking this man. And two: that this fool-fool man had just escaped from somewhere. He was not a young man but neither was he old. His grey hair did not match the bushy dark of his eyebrows. He could have been handsome, I suppose, if he had not looked so fearful – this fear gave him the look of a simpleton.

  But men who are soft in the head are unpredictable, I knew this. I was on my guard when this man placed one of the shaking hands in his pocket. He could still have a knife, he could still have a gun. Mark you, he was so weak and pathetic with his trembling it would have been entertaining to see how he would use them to threaten me. His hand, wriggling like a rat in his pocket, was there so long I feared he was touching up himself for luck. But then just as I was about to call him ‘a dirty, dirty little man’ he pulled out a piece of paper to show me. Now, paper is harmless – we all know this – but sometimes what is written on it is explosive. So I approached this paper with trepidation. Once he had handed me the paper this man then jumped – and I make no exaggeration – jumped five feet back away from me.

  ‘Wow, I will not bite you,’ I told him, which sent the man jumping another two feet further back. I said nothing else in case he hopped out of the field as I read the words on the paper. It said, ‘My name is Arthur Bligh. If you find me please return me to 21 Nevern Street, London SW5.’

  Now, let me set the scene: me and this man of limited sense were standing in a field in Lincolnshire. It may even have been Nottinghamshire but this was not the point. The point was we were neither of us anywhere near London. There are times so perplexing that the only thing to do is scratch your head. This was one of those times. Luckily, this scratching made me see the writing on the other side of the paper. The same Arthur Bligh business was written there but the address was changed. It was a farm nearby. I knew this farm: I had passed it many times when coming from the base.