‘I’m sorry to hear that about your mother,’ Gilbert said.

Celia lifted her head to him with a tiny smile for the briefest moment only.

And I said, ‘Yes, I am also sorry for her.’

But she did not smile that thank-you look to me.

The ensuing silence had Gilbert scratching his head in an embarrassed manner when suddenly he said, ‘Shall I see if I can get some ice-cream?’ The man had disappeared before I could tell him that I was not fond of that icy cold stuff.

I was just about to say something nice to Celia, I forget what but something condoling, when she lifted her face to me. There was menace in her eye. Her ample lips were pulled taut into the line of a vicious glower. I did not see it coming – her fist. It came up from behind her and whacked me full in the head. So hard was the blow I nearly fell off my feet as I stumbled dizzy back. When my eyes could once again focus it was to discern my friend Celia walking haughty away from me at great speed.

‘Celia,’ I tried to call after her, but that wretched girl had smacked all voice from me.

Seven

Hortense

An intended marriage requires three weeks for the banns to be published. We had just enough time. Three weeks with only one day to spare before the ship sailed for England. The minister sitting us on a pew in the small parish church proceeded to remind us, with an expression as solemn as a Sunday sermon, that marriage was a sanctity. Witnessed by God, it was not to be entered into idly or ill-advisedly.

Gilbert nodded like a half-wit as the minister went on. He threw his head back, looking to the church roof, when asked the question, ‘How long have you and your wife-to-be known each other?’ Tapping the side of his face with his fingers, mumbling, ‘Now let me see . . .’ he lingered so long with this deliberation that the minister resumed his sermon without receiving an answer. As the minister talked of the joy of seeing two young people embarking on a cherished life together after a period of unprecedented upheaval, Gilbert, satisfied with his trickery, looked furtively to me and winked.

* * *

‘Married!’ Mrs Anderson yelled. ‘But how long have you two known each other?’

‘Oh, now, let me see . . . Five days,’ Gilbert said.

‘It will be three weeks and five days by the time we are married,’ I explained.

‘And three weeks and six days will have passed when I sail to England to see the place is nice for the arrival of my new wife,’ Gilbert added.

There was complete silence at the table – even the old woman ceased sucking her chicken bone to stare on us. Suddenly Mrs Anderson pushed back her chair, leaped from her seat and wrapped her arms round me before moving on to Gilbert whom she hugged so tight his head almost disappeared into the crease of her bust.

‘So you like jazz, Gilbert?’ was all Mr Anderson wanted to know.

Returning to England was more than an ambition for Gilbert Joseph. It was a mission, a calling, even a duty. This man was so restless he could not stay still. Always in motion he was agitated, impatient – like a petulant boy waiting his turn at cricket. He told me opportunity ripened in England as abundant as fruit on Jamaican trees. And he was going to be the man to pluck it.

‘Your brother still there?’ he asked.

‘My brother?’

‘This Michael you ask me of – your brother – he still in England?’

‘Perhaps he is,’ I told him.

‘Well, you must let me know his address and I can look him up for you.’

But this big-ideas man had no money. He had spent all his money, he confided to me, on bees.

‘On bees?’ I asked.

He had some crazy notion about honey producing money. His cousin in St Mary convinced him that keeping bees was foolproof. All he had to do was give this cousin the money to buy hives, jars and printed labels and soon the money from the honey would send Gilbert winging to England.

‘But,’ he told me, ‘this cousin of mine lost the bees.’

‘How you lose bees?’ I asked.

His reply? ‘It is not easy, but it can be done.’

This small setback had left him undeterred. He had another money-making idea. Postcards. Tourists, he told me, who were now flocking to this island for sun and rum need postcards – pictures, scenes of the many wonders of Jamaica to send back to their family at home. He would swiftly be posted to England on the money he made. He sold two. Both to Jamaicans who tearfully remembered the places in the pictures from their youth. The money he made clinked in his pocket. But he was not downcast. He had another plan, he said.

It was while he was placing an advertisement in the Daily Gleaner for his services – as a storeman or a driver or a clerk or a watchman or a dairyman or a messenger – under the ex-servicemen’s section headed, ‘Help Those Who Helped’, that he saw the notice about a ship that was leaving for England. The Empire Windrush, sailing on 28 May. The cost of the passage on this retired troop-ship was only twenty-eight pounds and ten shillings.

‘Of course, this is twenty-eight pounds and ten shillings I have not got,’ he said.

And at that moment – as Gilbert became demoralised for the first time in the face of his impossible endeavour – I had cause to thank Mr Philip and Miss Ma for a lesson they had long taught me. Prudence. A small amount of my wage every week I placed into the building society for a rainy day. And the days before Gilbert left were the rainiest the island had ever seen. ‘I can lend you the money,’ I told him.

Dumbstruck, he gaped like an idiot before a smile turned one corner of his mouth. ‘Your mother never tell you, neither a lender nor a borrower be?’

‘You can pay me back.’

‘Oh, I know that, Miss Mucky Foot. But what I don’t know is why you lend me the money.’

‘So you can go to England.’ Again he was silent, so I carried on: ‘I will lend you the money, we will be married and you can send for me to come to England when you have a place for me to live.’

‘Oh, woe!’ he shouted. ‘Just say that again because I think me ears playing a trick on me there.’

‘You can send for me when you are settled.’

‘Not that bit. I know that bit. I hear that bit. It was the bit about a marriage.’

‘How else will I come? A single woman cannot travel on her own – it would not look good. But a married woman might go anywhere she pleased.’

It took Gilbert only two hours to decide to ask me if I would marry him. And he shook my hand when I said yes, like a business deal had been struck between us.

In the breath it took to exhale that one little word, England became my destiny. A dining-table in a dining room set with four chairs. A starched tablecloth embroidered with bows. Armchairs in the sitting room placed around a small wood fire. The house is modest – nothing fancy, no show – the kitchen small but with everything I need to prepare meals. We eat rice and peas on Sunday with chicken and corn, but in my English kitchen roast meat with two vegetables and even fish and chips bubble on the stove. My husband fixes the window that sticks and the creaky board on the veranda. I sip hot tea by an open window and look on my neighbours in the adjacent and opposite dwelling. I walk to the shop where I am greeted with manners, ‘Good day’, politeness, ‘A fine day today’, and refinement, ‘I trust you are well?’ A red bus, a cold morning and daffodils blooming with all the colours of the rainbow.

Gilbert cut a surprisingly smart figure at the wedding. We were both astonished to see the other looking so elegant. He in a grey double-breasted suit, his trousers wide, his cuffs clean, his shirt white, his tie secured with a dainty knot, his hair nicely oiled and waving. I, in a white dress with a frill at the hem, white shoes with heels and a hat trimmed with netting sitting at a fashionable angle on my head. Gilbert, taking my hand in front of the altar, whispered softly, ‘You look nice.’