I followed him up the first stairs and heard the woman call, ‘What about the trunk, Gilbert? You can’t leave it where it is.’

Gilbert looked over my shoulder to answer her, smiling: ‘Don’t worry, Queenie. Soon come, nah, man.’

I had to grab the banister to pull myself up stair after stair. There was hardly any light. Just one bulb so dull it was hard to tell whether it was giving out light or sucking it in. At every turn on the stairs there was another set of steep steps, looking like an empty bookshelf in front of me. I longed for those ropes and pulleys of my earlier mind. I was groping like a blind man at times with nothing to light the way in front of me except the sound of Gilbert still climbing ahead. ‘Hortense, nearly there,’ he called out, like Moses from on top of the mountain. I was palpitating by the time I reached the door where Gilbert stood grinning, saying: ‘Here we are.’

‘What a lot of stairs. Could you not find a place with fewer stairs?’

We went into the room. Gilbert rushed to pull a blanket over the unmade bed. Still warm I was sure. It was obvious to me he had just got out of it. I could smell gas. Gilbert waved his arms around as if showing me a lovely view. ‘This is the room,’ he said.

All I saw were dark brown walls. A broken chair that rested one uneven leg on the Holy Bible. A window with a torn curtain and Gilbert’s suit – the double-breasted one – hanging from a rail on the wall.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘show me the rest, then, Gilbert.’ The man just stared. ‘Show me the rest, nah. I am tired from the long journey.’ He scratched his head. ‘The other rooms, Gilbert. The ones you busy making so nice for me you forget to come to the dock.’

Gilbert spoke so softly I could hardly hear. He said, ‘But this is it.’

‘I am sorry?’ I said.

‘This is it, Hortense. This is the room I am living.’

Three steps would take me to one side of this room. Four steps could take me to another. There was a sink in the corner, a rusty tap stuck out from the wall above it. There was a table with two chairs – one with its back broken – pushed up against the bed. The armchair held a shopping bag, a pyjama top, and a teapot. In the fireplace the gas hissed with a blue flame.

‘Just this?’ I had to sit on the bed. My legs gave way. There was no bounce underneath me as I fell. ‘Just this? This is where you are living? Just this?’

‘Yes, this is it.’ He swung his arms around again, like it was a room in a palace.

‘Just this? Just this? You bring me all this way for just this?’

The man sucked his teeth and flashed angry eyes in my face. ‘What you expect, woman? Yes, just this! What you expect? Everyone live like this. There has been a war. Houses bombed. I know plenty people live worse than this. What you want? You should stay with your mamma if you want it nice. There been a war here. Everyone live like this.’

He looked down at me, his badly buttoned chest heaving. The carpet was threadbare in a patch in the middle and there was a piece of bread lying on it. He sucked his teeth again and walked out the room. I heard him banging down the stairs. He left me alone.

He left me alone to stare on just this.

Two

Gilbert

‘Is this the way the English live?’ How many times she ask me that question? I lose count. ‘This the way the English live?’ That question became a mournful lament, sighed on each and every thing she see. ‘Is this the way the English live?’

‘Yes,’ I tell her, ‘this is the way the English live . . . there has been a war . . . many English live worse than this.’

She drift to the window, look quizzical upon the scene, rub her gloved hand on the pane of glass, examine it before saying once more, ‘This the way the English live?’

Soon the honourable man inside me was shaking my ribs and thumping my breast, wanting to know, ‘Gilbert, what in God’s name have you done? You no realise, man? Cha, you married to this woman!’

Queenie was still standing by the open door when I dared fetch the trunk that Hortense had sailed across an ocean. ‘Everything all right, Gilbert?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ I tell her.

‘What did you say her name was?’

‘Hortense.’

‘Funny name.’

‘What, funnier than Queenie?’

She gave a little laugh although I had not made a joke. ‘You’ll have to move that trunk. I need to shut the door. Someone will be away with it if you’re not careful.’

‘If they can lift it, it’s theirs,’ I muttered, before adding, ‘I moving it now, Queenie.’

My idea was to sort of slide the trunk up the stairs. Now, I could do this for one stair perhaps – two stairs if I could rest up me feet for an hour after. But this trunk lifted like the coffin of a fat man turned to stone. I would have to get one of the boys to help me. So I knock on Winston’s room.

Now, the man that answer the door was not Winston. True, him look likeWinston, him talk like Winston and him dress like Winston. But Winston was half of a twin. Identical as two lemons on a tree. This was his brother Kenneth. To tell them apart, try to borrow a shilling. Winston will help you out but pester you all over London till him get it back. Kenneth, on the other hand, will persuade you to give him a shilling, assuring you that he could turn it into a pound before the week’s end. Kenneth’s home was in Notting Dale with an Irish woman named Noreen. I knew this was not my friend Winston when, after I asked him to help me with my wife’s trunk, the man before me said, ‘So you tell me she jus’ come from home? You know what she have in that trunk?’

‘No, man.’

‘Come, let us open it. Mango fetching a good price. You think she have rum? I know one of the boys give me half his wage to place him tongue in a guava.’

‘Is my wife’s belongings in that trunk.’

‘Me caan believe what me ear is hearing. You a man. She just come off the boat – you mus’ show who boss. And straight way so no bad habit start. A wife must do as her husband say. You ask a judge. You ask a policeman. They will tell you. Everyt’ing in that trunk belong to you. What is hers is yours and if she no like it a little licking will make her obey.’

And I asked this smooth-tongue man, ‘How come you in Winston’s room? Noreen throw you out again?’

Silly as two pantomime clowns we struggled with this trunk – but at a steady pace. That is, until the trunk fell back down one whole flight when Kenneth, letting go, insisted that a cigarette – which I had to supply – was the only thing that would help him catch his breath. How long did it take us to reach the room? I do not know. A fine young man when we start, I was a wheezing old crone when we eventually get to the top. And there is Hortense still sitting delicate on the bed, now pointing a white-gloved finger saying, ‘You may place it under the window and please be careful.’

Kenneth and I, silently agreeing with each other, dropped the wretched trunk where we stood, just inside the door.

It is not only Jamaicans that like to interrogate a stranger with so many questions they grow dizzy. But the Jamaican is the undisputed master and most talented at the art. And so Kenneth began. The hands on a clock would have barely moved but he had asked Hortense which part of the island she came from, how many members in her family, her daddy’s occupation, where she went to school, what ship she sailed on, did she meet a man on the ship from Buff Bay named Clinton and, of course, what did she have in the trunk? Now, him never wait long enough for any answer and Hortense, although listening polite at first, gradually come to look on Kenneth like she just find him stuck to her shoe.

‘Thank you for your help, Kenneth,’ I say.

‘Oh, you have curtain up here,’ Kenneth say.

‘Goodbye,’ I tell him.

‘You goin’, man?’ him say.

So I have to give him the sign. All we Jamaican boys know the sign. When a man need to be alone with a woman, for reasons only imagination should know, the head is cocked just a little to one side while the eye first open wide then swivel fast to the nearest exit. Even the most fool-fool Jamaican boy can read this sign and would never ignore it in case it should be they that needed it next time.