So all this rumination is taking place as I move closer. I was about to bend my knee so I could reach the brooch when hear this . . . it flew away. Black flecks suddenly pitting the air. That jewel was no more than a cluster of flies caught by the light, the radiant iridescent green the movement of their squabbling backs. My eyes no longer believed what they saw. For after the host of flies flew they left me with just the small piece of brown dog’s shit they had all gathered on. Was this a sign? Maybe. For one of the big-eyed newcomer boys walk straight along and step right in the muck.

Sleep in a room squashed up with six men and you will come to know them very well. Not because they tell you why they leave Jamaica or pine for the sweetheart that stay behind. You learn nothing of mummies, or schooldays, and hear no hopeful dreams for their life in England. No. What you come to know more intimate than a lover is the sound of every sleeping breath they make. Take Winston: every night him call out the words, ‘Gimme nah.’ His twin brother Kenneth sleep slapping his lips together as if sucking on a melon. Eugene and Curtis snore. Both sound to your ear like a faulty rumbling engine. But if you shout, ‘Hush nah, man,’ Eugene will obey while Curtis will rev up. The breath from Cleveland’s open mouth smell as if it come from his backside, and Louis spend his night scratching himself and his morning wondering why his skin raw.

This old RAF volunteer had slept in barracks with many more than six men and everyone know war is as hard as life can get. But sleep in this tiny malodorous room, step over three beds to sit on yours, watch as one boy jumps out of his bed to go to work and another returning from work jumps in to take his place, have this man shush and cuss you because he needs to sleep while you try to dress to look respectable for another day, try shaving with no water and sucking cornflakes so the crunching does not disturb and you will swear those days of war were a skylark.

But still breezy from the sailing on the Windrush these were the first weeks for we Jamaicans. And every one of us was fat as a Bible with the faith that we would get a nice place to live in England – a bath, a kitchen, a little patch of garden. These two damp cramped rooms that the friend of Winston’s brother had let us use were temporary. One night, maybe two. More private than the shelter. Better than the hostel. Two months I was there! Two months, and this intimate hospitality had begun to violate my hope. I needed somewhere so I could start to live.

So how many gates I swing open? How many houses I knock on? Let me count the doors that opened slow and shut quick without even me breath managing to get inside. Man, these English landlords and ladies could come up with excuses. If I had been in uniform – still a Brylcreem boy in blue – would they have seen me different? Would they have thanked me for the sweet victory, shaken my hand and invited me in for tea? Or would I still see that look of quiet horror pass across their smiling face like a cloud before the sun, while polite as nobility they inform me the room has gone? Or listen as they let me know, so gently spoken, ‘Well, I would give it to you only I have lots of lodgers and they wouldn’t like it if I let it to a coloured.’ Making sure I understand, ‘It’s not me – if it was just me I’d let you,’ before besmirching the character of some other person who, I was assured, could not bear the sight of me. Man, there was a list of people who would not like it if I came to live – husband, wife, women in the house, neighbours, and hear this, they tell me even little children would be outraged if a coloured man came among them. Maybe I should start an expedition – let me trace it back and find the source of this colour bar. Go first to that husband, then to that wife, the woman in the house, the neighbours, the children. When each of them tell me it not them but the next man I move on. Eventually the originator of this colour prejudice would have to stand there before me. And I could say to their face, ‘So, it is you that hates all niggers, I presume.’

It was desperation that made me remember 21 Nevern Street, SW5. From that little scrap of paper I first read in a field in Lincolnshire many years before. And from envelopes carefully addressed in my neatest hand. Who knows? That house might have been nothing more than a gap in the road where neighbours still talk of the rocket hit. A stranger might have come to the door to ponder long on who lived there before. A vexed husband’s fist might have been all that I would see. But it was not just my feet that were too sore to care.

Trepidation trembled my hand as I rang a bell that did not work. I knocked. It was Queenie Bligh who answered. And again she looked on me as she had done when we first met. For the count of two seconds she thought I was someone else. Then she called my face to mind and said, ‘Well, if it isn’t Airman Gilbert Joseph. Now, what the bloody hell happened to you?’

1948

Twenty

Hortense

He woke me rude, this man, shaking on my shoulder. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘I make you a cup of tea.’ It was not the rousing that most alarmed me but the white smoke that came puffing from his mouth like he was the devil himself. ‘I must get to work now,’ he said, as smoke wafted from him as sure as if his inside was fire. I seized the cover to me. ‘I no touch you. I am going to work.’ As I raised my head from the pillow I saw breath come as a curtain of vapour from my own mouth. Only as I felt the pinching of the cold on my exposed cheek, sharp as acid, did I remember that I was in England.

‘Cold today, eh?’ he said. Awake now, the covers too flimsy, my body began to shiver. ‘Come, drink the tea – warm you up. I must get to work now.’ He put the cup on to the table. A glance to the window told me it was still night time. This man never said he worked during the night. He pulled back the ragged curtain but it made no difference to the light – only excite a draught of chill to nibble on my other cheek. ‘It’s morning,’ he told me.

‘Morning?’ I said.

‘Yes, it is nearly seven o’clock.’

But there was no sun – not even a feeblest shadow. How the birds wake in this country and know when to sing? Gilbert rouse them with a cup of tea? ‘It’s too dark,’ I said.

‘It is winter. Always dark on winter morning,’ he told me. The man sat heavy in the armchair to lace up his shoe. ‘It get dark early too,’ he said, although he was not addressing me but thinking loud. ‘Most of the day dark. Sometimes if you blink you can miss the whole day.’ I stretched out my arm for the tea but the cold threatened to take the skin from it, so I replaced it quickly back under the cover.

‘I put on the fire for you,’ he said, wrapping himself in this big dark coat. ‘But if it go out you must put money in the meter. You think you can do that?’ I did not give the man an answer, merely turned my head from him. It was not I who was the fool. ‘I will be back at six o’clock. You think you can fix me up a little something to eat? There are some eggs and potatoes in that cupboard by the sink. You can make some chips for me?’

He said it so plaintive I almost felt sorrow for him. ‘Of course,’ I told him. Then he was gone.

Twenty-one

Gilbert

It was with trepidation that I had learned to pass by Queenie’s door. That last flight of stairs saw me like a criminal stepping lightly in my socks. Balancing, I swear, on one toe alone so I did not make noise enough to rouse her. It was early morning – not even the birds had sensed a new day – and I am approaching her door so light, my feet are feeling no floor, just hovering above lino.

‘Gilbert,’ I heard her call. Man, this woman’s hearing so good she must catch the sound of the stitching rustling in my socks. ‘Is that you, Gilbert?’ To avoid her I would have to float down from my window on angel’s wings.