‘There opportunity here if you look right.’

‘So why so many young men and women queuing up for passport? Why so many striking for job and busting up the place? Elwood, I have seen it with my own eye. The world out there is bigger than any dream you can conjure. This is a small island. Man, we just clinging so we don’t fall off.’

‘You chattin’ nonsense, man.’

‘Everyone movin’. The time is right.’

Eyes wide with impact, Elwood said, ‘But come, now me see – you gon’ go licky-licky to the British.’

‘I need opportunity, Elwood. I need advancement.’

‘You wan’ go back a England.’

‘I can’t get a break here, man.’

‘Why you no come to a meeting with me? Me show you the future being suckle and nurture there. An independent Jamaica gon’ take care of us.’

I had been to several of his meetings. Angry young men, not enough money to put decent clothes on their backs or keep their teeth from rotting in their heads, fighting with each other over this tiny scrap of land. Squabbling over who will get the fifth quarter. Man, they wrestling over who their next master is going to be.

‘When we get rid of the white man—’ Elwood began.

‘Stop! Elwood, you no see? When you get rid of the white man is a coloured man you will have to fetch for instead.’

‘I fetch for no one. Black man will rule.’

‘You a dreamer, Elwood.’

‘And you a Jamaican. You born a Jamaican. You die a Jamaican. Jamaica mean nothing to ya, man? Why you wan’ leave?’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh, and I am the dreamer. How you gon’ get England? You need money. You gon’ swim or maybe you slip in some rich-lady bag make her carry you?’

‘I don’t know – but I mus’ try.’

‘Why? Why you wan’ the whole world when ya have a likkle piece a hope here? Stay. Stay and fight, man. Fight till you look ’pon what you wan’ see. Man, fight for your own country this time.’

‘Elwood, I tired of fighting.’

Looking on me like I was a stranger who had just appeared in his yard, he said nothing while he leisurely shook his head and sucked his teeth. Then lifting his eye away from mine, he quietly began, ‘Ah, Gilbert, me know you would do this. Me know you would wan’ go live Babylon. Me know you nah stay here. You wan’ ask me how I know? Come, let me tell ya, Gilbert. You may look like one of us but not’in’ gon’ change the fact your daddy is a white man.’

I was a giant living on land no bigger than the soles of my shoes. Everywhere I turn I gazed on sea. The palm trees that tourists thought rested so beautiful on every shore were my prison bars. Horizons my tormenting borders. I envied the pelican, I envied the crow – with wings they could fly easy from this place to rest in some other. I became a big-talk man – even when the clinking of small change in my ragged pockets accused me of being a fool. Oh, there were plenty men like me, wandering this small island, their head cluttered with the sights they had once looked on. If you would listen then we would talk – widen your eyes with stories of war and the Mother Country. Tell you of bombs, planes, bullets and guns. Fog and snow and autumn mist. Come, ask a question you have always wanted to know. The King – oh, a fine man, and Shakespeare too. Paved with gold, no – but, yes, diamonds appear on the ground in the rain.

When my mirror could only return to me a look of disgust, a dainty girl like Celia Langley, who would gasp excited at my traveller’s tales, puffed me proud as a prince. I had no thought of courtship, my only need was her adoration. Entrance her, dazzle her. Come, let me tell her those truths, those lies, those half-baked dreams.

But with Hortense my feet landed on solid ground with such a thump my ankles nearly snapped. How come this woman who was inches shorter than I could look down at me from so high a height that I felt like a dwarf? Oh, she was pretty – a golden complexion that left a faint blush of pink at her rounded cheeks. Eyes flashing alive – brown and wide with lashes that flapped like butterflies’ wings. And her lips could have been soft and charming if not always pinched tight with vexation or lifted haughty about the corners to show her disdain. Man, when she doubted the truth her eyebrows would raise so high on her forehead they looked to be blown there by the wind. How did this woman learn to sneer so? Was it through bad odour or was she always smelling her top lip? Even her ears could cuss you. Come, let us face it, my big talk just shrivel in the face of her scorn.

She did not like me. My face distressed her, my jokes confused her, my tales of war bored her and talk of England made her yawn. So I thought she was messing with me when she offered me the twenty-eight pounds and ten shillings I needed for a passage to England. ‘I can lend you the money,’ was all she said. She followed it with no explanation. Man, I do not recall that she even smiled. I laughed – a sort of giggle you make when someone is having a joke you do not find funny. But she just stare on me in so serious a way it led me straight to wondering how I might pay her back. Excited now, I decided that every week I would send her money. A little at first until I find me feet, then I would build it up. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but regular until this woman was paid. I would write it down in a little book so no argument would occur. My honour would see the debt was paid. Hear this, I even thought to slit my finger to seal the deal in blood. But she had not finished with me yet. With no persuasion, with no fancy words, with no declarations of love, she let me know that I would have to marry her for the money. This woman was looking for escape and I was to be the back she would ride out on.

When I walked away from her that day I went to sit under the refuge of the guango tree. Tree lizards still scuttled up the bark and the cicadas still hissed like cymbals. But the ground was now parched and dry – too hard for me to push my fingers down into the earth. And it was there that I wept. I am not too proud to tell you I sobbed like a boy lost. I was beaten. There was no choice before me except one. If Hortense had money to buy me then, come, let us face it, my price was not too dear.

Nineteen

Gilbert

You see, most of the boys were looking upwards. Their feet might have been stepping on London soil for the first time – their shaking sea legs wobbling them on the steadfast land – but it was wonder that lifted their eyes. They finally arrive in London Town. And, let me tell you, the Mother Country – this thought-I-knew-you place – was bewildering these Jamaican boys. See them pointing at the train that rumbles across a bridge. They looked shocked when billowing black smoke puffed its way round the white washing hung on drying lines – the sheets, the pants, the babies’ bonnets. Come, they had never seen houses so tall, all the same. And what is that? A chimney? They have fire in their house in England? No! And why everything look so dowdy? Even the sunshine can find no colour but grey. Staring on people who were staring on them. Man, the women look so glum. Traffic turning their head this way and that. Steady there, boy – watch out. Look, you see a white man driving a bus? And over there, can you believe what the eye is telling? A white man sweeping the road.

But this old RAF volunteer had seen it all before, during the war. So I was looking down, unlike them big-eyed newcomer boys. I just arrive back in England and there on the pavement before me I spy a brooch. What a piece of good fortune, what a little bit of luck. Lying lost, this precious oval jewel shimmered the radiant iridescent green of a humming-bird caught by the sun. My auntie Corinne would have raised her hands to the heavens to call it a sign.

Now these were the thoughts that passed through my head in the three steps it took me to reach that brooch. One: perhaps it fall from a young woman’s coat. Cha, so my blessing was another’s misfortune. Two: it was an old woman that lose it from her purse; maybe the police station was the proper place to take it. And three: Hortense – this deep-green brooch would look so pretty on her. I conjured an image in me mind. See me take the sparkling brooch to pin it to her dress, near her neck, against her smooth nut-brown skin. And look, see her touch the pin then tilt her head to charm a smile on me.