Normally I would not have answered a question so direct and presumptuous as that. Especially from a woman such as she. A woman whose living was obtained from the letting of rooms. But I was leaving Jamaica. Getting on a ship the very next day. And I thought I could afford to be charitable. This woman was, after all, very old and probably lonely for company.

I had had to stay in her lodgings the evening before I left in order that I might catch my early-morning sailing in good time. She had been kind. She had prepared me a meal of rice and peas, fried chicken and green banana. ‘The last supper,’ she joked, as she laid it in front of me. She talked all through my meal, telling me elaborate tales of every member of her family – a saintly dead husband, a thoughtless sister, a feckless son – until chewing felt like an improper response to her tales of woe.

After the meal she had helped me pack. Then, warning me of rationing and the cold in England, she disappeared and returned carrying a blanket she had knitted during the war. She explained, ‘You see, Mrs Joseph, I had no time to get it to a cold soldier. I start knitting this blanket from when the King first announce to the Empire that we were at war. And I finish the thing as they all dancing in the street in joy of the conflict over. I am not a fast knitter but this was not taken into account.’ She pressed her war blanket into my hand. Squares of brightly coloured uneven knitting sewn together to make a blanket big enough to shelter a platoon. I had room in my trunk so I took it graciously.

So when she asked her question of me instead of evading her prying I answered, ‘My husband has been without me in England for six months.’ Gilbert was true to his word. He had written to me regularly, sometimes our letters crossing – him asking something I had only just informed him of. But he kept me abreast of his plans. And they came along with a pace that sent excitement and trepidation racing around my veins. Soon everything was set. Everything was go.

But now the old woman’s jaw dropped to her chest. Her breath ceased for so long I feared for her health. Then she recovered enough to tell me, ‘You must go to England straight away. Those Englishwomen will be up to funny business with him. A young man alone in England. You know these white women like to make sure they brown all over. And these young men have urges. I know, I have a son who would never let an urge pass by him.’

I only smiled at her rudeness and told her, ‘Please do not fret on my account. I will take my chances.’

But she carried on with curious anxiety, ‘You must go straight away, Mrs Joseph, before him forget him marriage vows and all the Lord’s Commandments too.’

1948

Nine

Queenie

For the teeth and glasses.

That was the reason so many coloured people were coming to this country, according to my next-door neighbour Mr Todd. ‘That National Health Service – it’s pulling them in, Mrs Bligh. Giving things away at our expense will keep them coming,’ he said. He might have had a point except, according to him, they were all cross-eyed and goofy before they got here.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

‘Oh, yes,’ he assured me. ‘But now, of course, they’ve got spectacles and perfect grins.’

I knew he’d be round, as soon as that woman, Gilbert’s wife, left her trunk in the road for all to see. A woman. You don’t see many coloured women. I’d seen old ones with backsides as big as buses but never a young one with a trim waist. His head popped out of his door then darted back in again. Probably went to get his shoes.

I was right. Not five minutes after Gilbert had taken the trunk inside he was on the doorstep. ‘Mr Todd,’ I said, ‘what can I do for you?’

Another darkie, that’s what the look on his face said. The motley mixture of outrage, shock, fear, even – nostrils flaring, mouth trying to smile but only managing a sneer. ‘Yes. I just wanted a quick word with you, Mrs Bligh, about your paying guests.’

I bet he did. He’d have told that horrible sister of his that more coloureds had just turned up. How many is it now? they’d have said to each other. Fifty? Sixty? ‘You’ll have to speak to her, Cyril,’ she’d have told him, before bemoaning how respectable this street was before they came. They’d have got all those words out – decent, proper – polished them up and made them shine, before blaming Mrs Queenie Bligh for singlehandedly ruining the country. They were the same during the war, although even they couldn’t blame me for that. Too many Poles. Overrun by Czechs. Couldn’t move for Belgians. And as for Jews. They moaned about Jews even after we knew what the poor beggars had been through. They were all right in their own country, Mr Todd reasoned, but he wanted none of them down our street. He’d never forgiven me for taking in Jean. Bombed out. Her family dead. Sweetheart blown to no-one-there in North Africa. Why not? She was company even when she started going out all night and coming in with the milk. He asked, bold as anything, what she did for a living. I told him she was a nurse – you know, on night duty. Choked on his cup of tea before enquiring if I was very sure of that.

Three times in one day he once asked me if there was any news of my husband Bernard. Tried to make out it was because they were such good chums. But I knew why he asked. He wanted my errant husband home to put an end to me taking in all the flotsam and jetsam off the streets. Concern for me, he’d say – a woman on her own in this great big house. A nearly-not-quite-widow. No man to protect me, guide me, show me the error of my ways. He looked out for me as neighbours should, Mr Todd said. Our own kind sticking together, just like during the war. Only that’s not quite how I remember it, even then.

But I was grateful to him (and, I suppose, his nasty sister). He boarded up the hole in the roof. Got rid of the pigeons. Plastered the ceiling. Replaced the windowpanes. Helped me clear the rubble out of the garden. I knew where to go when a fuse blew – he had the little bits of wire on a card all ready, torch handy. I suppose I was indebted. He even offered to decorate the place, if I could get hold of the paint. ‘Stop it deteriorating any further, Mrs Bligh.’

Gilbert moving in had put an end to all that. Darkies! I’d taken in darkies next door to him. But not just me. There were others living around the square. A few more up the road a bit. His concern, he said, was that they would turn the area into a jungle. But I was pleased to see Gilbert. I’d often wondered what happened to Airman Gilbert Joseph. You do with a war – I know that now. Everyone scattered like dandelion seeds. Some people you never think you’ll see again – especially on your doorstep. And I hadn’t seen Gilbert since the incident. After it I didn’t want to see anyone. He wrote to me, more than once, but I didn’t reply. It’s not that I blamed him. How could I blame him? I bet he thought I did but I didn’t. It was the war I wanted rid of, but it was people I was losing. Mother and Father suggested I move back to the farm until the war was over. How many times was I meant to escape from that blinking place? I’d already done it twice. No, I told them, I have to get back to Earls Court – make the place warm for when Bernard eventually gets home.

I did write to Bernard in India – told him all about it. But the next letter I got from him made no mention of his father. Or the one after that. He was not one for talking about things, I knew that, but blinking heck! It was like it never happened. If that’s how he wants it, I’ll wait until he’s returned. Better to look him in the eye and explain it to him, anyhow. But I missed my father-in-law Arthur. And not only for his potatoes and onions. Certainly not for those runner beans. An hour I’d boil them and would still be chewing them from dinner when I was brushing my teeth for bed. ‘Send them to Churchill,’ I’d told him – secret weapon. ‘Give them to Hitler’s troops – they’d be too busy chomping to fight a war.’ Arthur had laughed at that in his quiet way.