As I parted my lips to thank her no words came. Trying again I could only mouth the gratitude.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked me.

A tear was on my face. I could feel its damp, itchy path creeping down to my chin. I wiped it away.

Watching me, she took her hand and laid it on my arm. ‘Are you all right? You look cold. It’s a cold night.’

‘Yes,’ I said. The place where her hand was on me was melting with the warmth of that gentle touch.

‘Here,’ she rummaged around in her pocket and pulled out a little bag, ‘have one of these.’ The bag was full of sweets. She pushed it towards me, ‘Go on.’ I put my hand in this little bag. The contents was one sticky hard lump. She pulled the bag away again. ‘Oh, they’re all stuck together. Sorry.’ And she started fiddling with the bag – cracking and poking it with her fingers. ‘It’s cough sweets, they always get stuck together. Sorry. But they warm you up.’ Once more she handed me the bag. I took one. ‘Have one for later if you like.’

‘No, one is fine,’ I told her.

‘Right, I’m going home.’ She put her own hand into the bag, then the sweet into her mouth. It bulged in her cheek. ‘It’s the only place to be tonight,’ she said, with some difficulty owing to the confection. She touched my arm again, saying, ‘And cheer up, it may never happen,’ then clopped off down the road.

How long did I stare at that sweet in my hand? Fool that I am, I took a handkerchief from my pocket to wrap it. I had no intention of eating that precious candy. For it was a salvation to me – not for the sugar but for the act of kindness. The human tenderness with which it was given to me. I had become hungry for the good in people. Beholden to any tender heart. All we boys were in this thankless place. When we find it, we keep it. A simple gesture, a friendly word, a touch, a sticky sweet rescued me as sure as if that Englishwoman had pulled me from drowning in the sea.

I carried two portions of fish and chips back to the room for Hortense and me. There she was, still sitting on the bed. Her face, even after this time, remained set in an ill-tempered frown. ‘See here, Miss Mucky Foot,’ I said. ‘I have fish and chips for you and me.’ Only her big eyes swivelled to my direction while her arms folded tighter across her chest. I got out two plates, which were neatly stacked in the cupboard. Unwrapping and placing the fish and chips on the plate I tell her, ‘You know what the English do?’ Of course she did not reply but I did not expect her to. ‘They eat this food straight from the newspaper. No plate. Nothing.’ I knew this high-class woman would not be able to keep her face solemn in the presence of such barbarity. Scandalised, she could not stop herself staring on me in disbelief. ‘Yes, from the newspaper! So lesson number one, Miss Mucky Foot. This is a chip.’ I offered the chip to her on a fork. She took it from me and popped it greedy into her mouth. ‘And now lesson number two. Are you listening to me carefully.’ I leaned in towards her to whisper the secret. She had her big eye on me, mesmerised as a gossip. ‘Not everything,’ I tell her, ‘not everything the English do is good.’

Thirty-three

Hortense

Mrs Bligh, or Queenie, the familiar name she desired I use, came to her door, wrapping herself in a dowdy woollen coat. I presumed she had changed her mind about the arranged excursion to the shops, for I believed this dreary coat to be her housecoat. Wishing to allay any anxiety that I might be disappointed by this alteration of plan, I told her, ‘Do not worry yourself on account of I. I shall find my way around the shops with no problem.’

I was astounded when, closing the door behind her, she said, ‘What? What are you talking about? I’m ready.’ For this dismal garment, which I had taken to be her dressing gown, was her good outside coat. Could the woman not see this coat was not only ugly but too small for her? She determined, wrestled herself in to do up the button. When she was finished this fight, she look on me distasteful, up and down. I was dressed as a woman such as I should be when visiting the shops in England. My coat clean, my gloves freshly washed and a hat upon my head. But Mrs Bligh stare on me as if something was wrong with my apparel, before telling me once more, ‘I’m not worried about what busybodies say. I don’t mind being seen in the street with you.’

And yet it was she, this young Englishwoman, and not I who was dressed in a scruffy housecoat with no brooch or jewel, no glove or even a pleasant hat to lift the look a little.

Imagine my astonishment when, reaching the bustling street, every Englishwoman I look on is also attired in a dowdy housecoat. And as if the Almighty had stolen the rainbow from this place not one person was dressed in a colour bright enough to cheer my eye. All was grey. But walking through this drab, my eye began to detect colours that did amaze me. The surprising colours in the countenance of all the English people. In no book or tutoring that I had acquired did anyone tell me that so many different types of English people could be found. In Jamaica all English people had looked as my tutors at college had appeared. Their hair fair, the colour of baked bread. Their complexion red and ruddy from the sun. It was with great ease that an English person could be distinguished walking along the road from even the most high-class of Jamaican. But here now, in England, so many different complexions were placed before me that my mind became perplexed. This walk to the shops with Mrs Bligh had me looking about in confusion.

‘These are shops,’ Mrs Bligh told me.

I paid it no mind that this woman believed I could not tell that the place before me, with its window of food displayed, was a shop. Because my mind was puzzled by the woman standing beside us. Her hair was black as ink, her complexion not much lighter than my own – the colour of honey. She held the hand of a small boy with the same dark hair. Seeing me gazing on them, the boy nudged his mother and both of them turned blue eyes to stare back on me.

‘This shop is called a grocer’s,’ Mrs Bligh told me.

I nodded. It had groceries in the window, what else could it be? But I was waiting for this blue-eye-yet-black-hair woman to speak. Was she English, or foreign?

‘Come on, let’s go in,’ Mrs Bligh said to me.

As the dark woman and her son had gone in before us I was happy to follow. The dark woman perusing the counter asked the shopkeeper, ‘Have you got cheese today?’ Impeccable English, rounded and haughty. My mouth could do nothing but gape. I had never seen an Englishwoman so dark before. At home her countenance would leave many elderly Jamaican men looking about them abashed.

Mrs Bligh, seeing my gaping mouth, said, ‘In a grocery shop, you can get milk, biscuits, sugar, cornflakes, eggs, that sort of thing. Do you need eggs? Bacon? A lot of it’s still on ration but most things are here. So remember that, it’s a grocery shop.’

Now the man serving this dark woman had hair that was red. His face was speckled as a bird’s egg with tiny red freckles. Scottish. I believed him to be Scottish. For in Jamaica it is only Scottish people that are so red. But no, he too was English.

‘What can I do you for?’ he asked me directly. A red Englishman!

‘He wants to know if you’d like anything,’ Mrs Bligh told me.

I obliged her concern by making a purchase. ‘A tin of condensed milk, please,’ I asked him.

But this red man stared back at me as if I had not uttered the words. No light of comprehension sparkled in his eye. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said.

Condensed milk, I said, five times, and still he looked on me bewildered. Why no one in this country understand my English? At college my diction was admired by all. I had to point at the wretched tin of condensed milk, which resided just behind his head.

‘Oh, condensed milk,’ he told me, as if I had not been saying it all along.