‘No,’ I called.

‘I can tell it’s you,’ she told me, her face now at the door.

How? I wanted to ask her. Tell me how, in God’s name, she always knows when I am near? ‘Queenie, I am just off to work. You wan’ me be late?’

‘Won’t take a minute.’

Luck is a funny thing. To some only a large win of money at the pools is luck. Or finding a valuable jewel at your feet on a London street. That surely is luck. But during the war luck take another turn. The bomb that just miss you is luck. Only your leg blown off and not your head is luck. All your family die but your mummy is spared – congratulations, you a fortunate man. So, let me tell you what luck is for a coloured man who is just off a boat in England. It is finding Queenie Bligh. It is seeing she has a big house and is happy to take me and a few of the boys in as lodgers. Greater than sipping rum punch from a golden bowl – that is luck England-style.

Early days and Queenie was still that pretty blonde woman who friendly leaned across a table to share a rock bun with me. And though no longer dressed in uniform, I was still, even in my plain suit, one of the boys in blue. Happy to have me around her house, she made me tea. We, sipping the drink, would talk. All that business with her father-in-law: ‘That’s all in the past,’ she told me. No need for me to worry. And her husband: ‘I don’t know what’s happened to him but I’ve got to get on with my life, Gilbert.’ She needed my help – a woman on her own. She wore me out. Jumping steps and laughing like a girl as we moved furniture around the house so she might let the rooms. Let me tell you, every night in those early days I slipped to my knees to give thanks at my good fortune and cuss those hastily taken marriage vows. Meeting up with Queenie Bligh was the best luck this Jamaican man had ever had.

Then Winston and Kenneth moved in. The rent Queenie charged us made me clean my ear to ask again. Three pounds a week each for these rundown rooms? Winston and even Kenneth gaped dumbfounded as she assured us she had no choice but to charge that sort of money. Then with the first week’s rent I delivered to her on Saturday morning she told me someone kept the door open too long. The next day she wanted me to know someone shut the door too loud. Something smelling up a room. Someone making too much noise. I must tell the boys not to leave on the light. Have I told the boys to keep their room clean?

‘Cha, me thought you say she your friend. So why the woman act like bakkra?’ Kenneth wanted to know.

We must not come in too late. There must be no one in the rooms without permission. Can we step over the second step on the first flight because it creaks? ‘Gilbert,’ she told me, ‘I’m relying on you to keep them all under control.’

Was I her caretaker now? This woman start vex me so I think her husband a sensible man to lose him way between here and India. Man, if there was a way I could disappear before her, come see me grasp it.

‘Was that Kenneth who helped you with that big trunk last night?’ she ask me.

Once I could not tell a lie. But to this new Queenie, and my abiding discouragement, I had now become skilled in the art. ‘No,’ I tell her.

‘I don’t want that Kenneth here, Gilbert. I don’t mind Winston. But I can’t tell which is which. I don’t want Kenneth here. I don’t trust him. He’s sly. And I’ve had Mr Todd round complaining about this and that.’

‘No worry. That was Winston help me with the trunk.’

‘You sure?’

‘Of course – why would I tell you a lie?’

She look in my eye. Then, ‘How’s your wife? Why didn’t you meet her?’

‘I am late for work now. I must go.’

‘Hang on a minute, Gilbert, there’s just one thing . . .’ she say. This one thing could be ‘Come dig up the garden for me.’

‘I must be off,’ I tell her, presenting her with my back.

‘Won’t take a minute . . .’ she call out.

Discourteous it may be but I am gone.

Twenty-two

Hortense

I hoped that Celia Langley could no longer see me. Where was she now? Sipping fruit punch and fanning herself in sunlight. While here was I on my first morning in England, shivering with goose bumps rising large as hillocks and my jaw aching with the effort of keeping my teeth from chattering. I never dreamed England would be like this. So cheerless. Determined, I held my breath but still I could hear no birdsong. The room was pitiful in the grey morning light. I thought it tumbledown last night but daylight was happy to show me more of its filthy secrets. Plaster missing from a bit of the wall. Jagged black lines of cracking everywhere. A missing handle on the chest of drawers. No basin in the sink. And there were lacy white patterns on the windowpane. Frost. I was taught by my headmistress, Miss Morgan, that frost is to be found on the outside of a window in England, but my curious finger got fastened to this stuff. Sticky with cold it melted under my warm fingertip on the inside of this room! For the useless fire roared with fierce heat only when I stood right on top of it. One inch, that was all, one inch back and the heat no longer reached me. Two inches, and I was in need of my coat. Three and it was as wintry as on the street. This room would not do. I could hear Celia Langley laughing on me. ‘The Lord surely moves in mysterious ways, Hortense,’ her mocking tone exclaimed.

But I paid her no mind. I opened my trunk. The bright Caribbean colours of the blanket the old woman had given me in Ochi leaped from the case. The yellow with the red, the blue with the green commenced dancing in this dreary room. I took the far-from-home blanket and spread it on the bed.

Miraculous – it was then I heard a bird sing. Oh, so joyful. Finding colour through a window its spirit rose to chirrup and warble. ‘Don’t laugh on me, Celia Langley,’ I said. ‘Just watch me, nah.’ I determined then to make this place somewhere I could live – if only for this short while. For England was my destiny. I started with that sink. Cracked as a map and yellowing I scrubbed it with soap until my hand had to brush perspiration from my forehead. Pulling the stinking tin potty from under the bed, ‘You next,’ I told it. But then there was knock on the door.

I ceased all movement – not even my heart dared a beat.

‘Anyone there?’ a voice said.

I made no reply. However, my held breath was preparing to choke me. The knock came again.

‘Anyone in there?’ It was the woman from downstairs. The landlady who had the evening before looked on me in a very rude manner. ‘Just like a word. Can you open up?’ Politeness and good breeding left me no choice. I opened up the door a little way.

Her face, coming close to the opening, smiled. ‘Just came to see if you’re all right.’ Her hair so blonde put me in mind of Mrs Ryder. That woman driving a car in her feathered hat as Michael watched her pass. But at once I put the thought from my head. I was in England now. That day was over.

‘Gilbert gone to work?’ the woman asked me. Her head was straining like a curious cat’s, moving this way and that trying to get a good look into the room. ‘I’m from downstairs. Remember me? I let you in last night? Hortense, isn’t it?’

I did not wish to appear rude to this woman on my first day in England so I acknowledged her questions with a small nod of the head.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ she said. What cat was she talking of? Don’t tell me there was a cat that must also live with us in this room. ‘My name’s Mrs Bligh,’ she carried on. ‘But you can call me Queenie, if you like. Everyone here does. Would you like that?’ The impression I received was that she was talking to me as if I was an imbecile. An educated woman such as I.

So I replied, ‘Have you lost your cat?’

And this woman’s eyes rolled as if this was a question I had asked of her several times before. ‘No,’ she told me, too forcefully. ‘In English it means that you’re not saying very much. Everything all right, though? I just thought I’d come and have a word with you.’