Small Island by Andrea Levy
In five, no, in six places, the job I had gone for vanish with one look upon my face. Another, I wait, letter in my hand, while everyone in this office go about their business as if I am not there. I can feel them watching me close as a pickpocket with his prey but cannot catch even a peeping twinkle of an eye. Until a man come in agitated. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he say to me. ‘We don’t want you. There’s no job for you here. I’m going to get in touch with that labour exchange, tell them not to send any more of you people. We can’t use your sort. Go on, get out.’
The girl at another office look on me with such horror – man, I swear her hair standing straight as stiff fingers – that with no hesitation I walk right back out again. Was I to look upon that expression every day? Come, soon I would believe that there was indeed something wrong with me.
After a few weeks of this benighted behaviour it was as the Almighty had foretold. This ex-RAF man had come to love his full and permanent driving licence. Man, I was as jubilant as a boy on his birthday when my hands finally caressed the cold of a steering-wheel as a postman driver for the Post Office. Ah, that celestial book. I may not have been studying the law in this Mother Country but, let me tell you, for a Jamaican man a job as a driver was great luck – if only luck England-style.
‘Oi, you,’ the foreman said at the sorting office. As far as I can remember this man had used my name on only one occasion. When I first stood before him his gaping mouth had mumbled, ‘What’s all this?’ Looking confused he rifled through pieces of paper from his seniors. Then, finding that I was indeed the driver he had requested, he said, ‘Humph. You’re Joseph, right?’ However, since that early, almost courteous encounter, ‘Oi, you’, had become his preferred way of addressing me. Scraping ice from the windscreen of a van, I did not answer in the hope it might force him to use my given name as he did to all his other drivers.
‘Clarke’s sick,’ he told me.
Bert Clarke. I had been delivering and collecting with Bert from Victoria for weeks. On every run, there and back, he insisted on telling me the way. Left here . . . right now . . . round the roundabout. He believed I, as a foreigner, did not know or could ever learn the route. Every day the same way, and every day the same instruction. He had been working for the Post Office since men still rode the mail across the land on horseback, he assured me. But his drilling had lately become accompanied with an unruly cough. ‘Oh, sorry, Gilbert, bit of a frog today but you’re doing all right.’
‘Sick?’ I said.
‘Yeah. Don’t you know what sick means?’ The moustache on this foreman always seemed to have a little bit of egg yolk clinging tenacious to it. And the bothersome ice had so numbed my fingers I was unable to make a fist.
‘There’s someone else on the run with you. Get going.’
The foreman pointed this young man, who was to partner me, in the direction of my van. I watched this man. Strutting along, his hands in his pockets. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. Took the cigarette from his mouth with his thumb and first finger. Smoke wafted from the side of his lips. He coughed and spat on the ground before replacing the cigarette. He saw someone he knew and, smiling, he waved: ‘All right.’ And at that moment I longed to be once more in Jamaica. I yearned for home as a drunk man for whisky. For only there could I be sure that someone looking on my face for the first time would regard it without reaction. No gapes, no gawps, no cussing, no looking quickly away as if seeing something unsavoury. Just a meeting as unremarkable as passing your mummy in the kitchen. What a thing was this to wish for. That a person regarding me should think nothing. What a forlorn desire to seek indifference.
Seeing me, the young man approaching my van stopped dead. I greeted him with a smile. But suddenly his forehead was frowning – two sharp parallel lines dramatically creasing on his head. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth to allow it to open wider. Throwing it down he screwed it into the ground with his foot while looking around him to make sure I was not a joke played on him by his mates. He lifted his finger to point at me and only then did he shout, ‘What the bloody hell is going on?’
Some jeers carried through the air from the other men looking on at this comical situation. Oh, it was so funny – their friend has got the coon. I had got no time for this. ‘Come on, man,’ I tell him, ‘we have to go.’
‘I ain’t going nowhere with you,’ he say, before starting off back to the foreman.
The foreman took me off the run.
‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘I have been doing this run for weeks with no trouble.’
‘Because I said so. He don’t wanna work with you.’
‘But it is his job.’
‘And I don’t bloody blame him. I said you’d be trouble.’
‘I am not the one giving the trouble.’
‘One more word out of you, coon, and you’re out. You can pick up from King’s Cross on your own. Or get your cards. You got it?’
This was the first time I had been to King’s Cross. And standing by the trolleys of sacks that had been taken from the train it was not obvious to me which were for Post Office sorting. I did not want to mistakenly take railway parcels as this would cause great commotion.
‘Which ones are post?’ I ask a group of workers – four men – who were standing watching me.
‘Did I hear someone speak?’ one of them say. They looked as idle as layabouts, leaning on a wall scratching themselves. All began chuckling at this man’s funny joke.
‘Will you help me?’ I ask again. I got no reply but all looked to me mischievous like I was sport. Rolling their eyes around pretending they cannot hear where my voice is coming from. Ignoring them, I move to lift a sack.
‘Look, a darkie’s stealing from the railways,’ one of them shout. I put down that sack and go for another. As long as I take the right thing that is all that concerns me. As I pick up another sack I hear, ‘Oh, my God, what’s the coon doing, now?’ How many sacks I pick up and with all they jeer that I am wrong?
‘Can you please help me?’ I have to ask them.
‘Speak English,’ one of them say.
‘It is English I am speaking,’ I tell him.
‘Anyone understand what this coloured gentleman is after?’ More laughing.
But, man, I could not afford to get into trouble. ‘Could you please tell me what I am to take?’
‘All right,’ one of them say. This man pushing himself from the wall moved closer to me. One of his eyes looked at me while the other roamed in the socket like a lost marble. I am thinking maybe they had tired of this sport – after all, they had been playing with this coon for a long time now. But this cross-eye man just say, ‘I’ll tell you, if you answer something for me.’ His friends start chuckling again in anticipation of a nice piece of humiliation.
But I answer him civilly, ‘What?’
‘When are you going back to the jungle?’ Oh, man, this is the best joke these four men had heard today. They all laugh at this. A coon. The jungle. What a lark. Two of them light up cigarettes. Man, I am better than a tea-break. While the hands on the clock keep moving. I pick up another sack. ‘Oi, darkie, you ain’t answered me. When are you going back to where you belong?’
And I said straight into this man’s one eye, ‘But I just get here, man, and I not fucked your wife yet.’
‘What did you say? What did he say?’ He turned to his pals but they had not heard. ‘Fucking wog. What did you just say?’
‘Nothing,’ I tell him.
Then this man grabs a handful of my Post Office uniform to pull me to him. ‘Go on, hit him,’ his chums encourage. But this is one fool man. My arms are free. So, let me see, I could have whacked his nose until it cracked and bled. Or punched his stomach so his breakfast choke him. I could have pulled his head back, grabbed his throat and wrung breath from him. Knee him in his balls. Wind him with an elbow. Smash my forehead into his mouth to dislodge a few teeth. And all before his friends had time to reach me. His grip was not strong. This man was sk
‘I said nothing, man. Nothing.’ And then I cringed craven until my submission cause this man to leave hold.
‘I’ll have to wash my fucking hands now I’ve touched you,’ he told me, pushing me from him. I stood pitiful as a whipped dog while this man said, ‘There’s decent Englishmen that should be doing your job.’ I kept my eyes at his feet while he indicated with his chin, ‘Over there, that trolley. Now get packed up and fuck off.’ And I went about my business with a gunfire of cuss words popping and pinging around me, while the postal sacks and an aching shame stooped me double.
Come, let us face it, I had forgotten all about Hortense by the time I arrive home from work that evening. All I am dreaming of as I climbed the stairs was to lie down on the bed and sleep. Perhaps dream of walking in the heat of the sun nyamming a mango. Or sipping sorrel with Elwood on the veranda. But I am woken rude as I opened the door of the room. Hortense was on her hands and knees there before me on the floor.
‘Get up! Get up!’ I shout. The anger so loud the force bounce from the wall to slap me back. She is startled. She jump and spill water from a bucket. She fuss to mop at it but I grab her arm. Enclose my hand round it and pull her from the floor. With the shock her feet make no struggle to stand upright. ‘Get up from off your knees,’ I tell her.
Suddenly she is looking in my face. Fear rounding and watering her eyes. She leaps away from my grip, her chest gasping for breath. ‘What is wrong with you?’ she say.
‘I am sorry,’ I tell her. ‘I am sorry.’ I back away from her to show her I am not a madman. To let her know she is safe. ‘But I cannot stand to see you on your knees, Hortense.’
‘But I have to wash this floor. The floor need washing.’
And I say, ‘I cannot see you on your knees so soon. I did not bring you to England to scrub a floor on your knees. No wife of mine will be on her knees in this country. You hear me?’
‘How you wan’ me clean the floor, then?’
‘Any way,’ I plead. ‘Any way, Hortense. But please, please, not on your knees.’
Thirty-one
Hortense
‘This is not chips,’ Gilbert Joseph say to me. ‘Your mummy never tell you how to make chips?’
‘My mother,’ I tell him, ‘taught me to be thankful for the food the Lord provide.’
‘But your mummy not here to eat this.’
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 J
‘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.