‘No, you can’t.’

‘My teacher, Miss Plumtree said my cake was the best outside the tea-shops of southern England.’

‘Your teacher taste it?’

‘Of course.’

‘And still she say it better than one she eat in a tea-shop.’

‘Yes.’

‘She tell you where this tea-shop is, because we must be sure not to go there?’

‘Are you teasing me, Gilbert Joseph?’ Just as she said that another boy came to our table. He was old and cold. Two scarves were round his head with a brown hat squashed down on the top.

‘Cold today, eh?’ He smiled, with the few teeth he had left.

‘Yes, man,’ I said.

He did not smell so good, his brown skin dusted grey with dirt. It was a struggle for him to tip his hat to Hortense as it was pushed down so far. But finally it came off. ‘Cold day today, Miss,’ he said to her.

She glanced at him, from his scarf-wrapped head, past his baggy stained trousers, to his dirty shoes. She looked swiftly around her and, in the wink of an eye, she came back to this man. And she answered him, ‘I have found that this is a very cold country.’

The man tipped his hat again. ‘Ah, very cold, Miss,’ he muttered, as he moved on, ‘very cold.’

Fifty-two

Bernard

Felt like a thief. Silly, I know. A man can’t burgle his own home. But the turn of the key in the lock. Unfamiliar objects in the room. Odd smell. Somehow made it all feel clandestine. I knew they’d be out. I’d seen them leave in the morning. Dressed up to the nines. Hardly aware of how queer they appeared. Would have been hard, I know, but they made no attempt to blend. His suit smart but baggy as a tramp. She completely overdressed – white gloves on a weekday. Still, I knocked a few times – just in case. Who knows how many more could be in there? Just a precaution. Not fear. Volatile creatures. No need to arouse them more than necessary.

There was a huge trunk blocking most of the doorway. Hardly room to turn. I banged a shin trying to navigate between bed and chair. A curious smell of gas. I wondered if they knew how to use it properly. Can’t be too careful. Checked the tap but it was firmly off. The unpleasant odour clung like dirt. Tatty cloth sprawled over the bed. Armchair limp and wounded – riddled with holes. Dead flowers in a jam-jar. The place was a disgrace.

Ma used to use this room. Sewing, mending, reading and suchlike. Always when I lost her, me a little boy, I would climb the stairs. If the door was closed I knew she was there. I’d tap three times, softly.

‘What are good little boys?’ she’d say.

‘Seen and not heard,’ I’d tell her. Only then she’d tell me to come in. Beckon me to sit beside her chair. And I’d watch her fingers in the dim firelight nimbly darning socks on a mushroom. Or embroidering something splendid. Any other footsteps heard on the stairs she’d stop. Listen. Her lips silently counting the flights taken. A door shutting and she’d say (not to me, but out loud) a name. That would be the lodger who’d just arrived home or just gone out. Pa rarely came up here. At least, he never got all the way to join us while Ma was alive. She’d know his footsteps, you see. Be up and out, curious to know what he wanted before he’d come too far. Pa was born in this room. His father and a couple of the great-aunts before him. A woman’s room, Ma called it. Not only because of the births. It was the view from the window. She could spy on the whole street without anyone realising, she said. It was the top of her world.

In Brighton (and out east), I often thought fondly of the creaking wooden stairs, the cavernous empty rooms, the stuck sashes of this venerable old house. Sometimes thought of it more than Queenie, I admit. But, funny thing, it was Ma I felt I’d let down, not Pa. The house was going to ruin. Of course, the war didn’t help. Lucky, some would say, to survive still with bricks and mortar to call your own. But I was a poor steward none the less. Couldn’t see anything out of the windows now. The curtains grubby and ripped. These coloured people don’t have the same standards. I’d seen it out east. Not used to our ways. When in Rome . . . Lost on these immigrants. They knew no better, like children, Mr Todd believed. But I was having none of it. He’d never been out east. Never seen how cunning these colonial types could be. Children? Poppycock. Had to put him straight. I was more experienced, you see. The recipe for a quiet life is each to their own. The war was fought so people might live amongst their own kind. Quite simple. Everyone had a place. England for the English and the West Indies for these coloured people. Look at India. The British knew fair play. Leave India to the Indians. That’s what we did. (No matter what a hash they make of it.) Everyone was trying to get home after the war to be with kith and kin. Except these blasted coloured colonials. I’ve nothing against them in their place. But their place isn’t here. Mr Todd thought they would only survive one British winter. I hoped he was right. These brown gadabouts were nothing but trouble.

Didn’t hear their footsteps on the stairs. Hearing not as keen since India. (Bullets and blasts saw to that.) I would have stood my ground anyway. No harm done. They looked a pitiful sight as they walked in. A pair of sodden minstrels once the gaiety’s past. Decked in seaside colours the pair of them. Their clothes far too flimsy for our climate. Drooping and sagging with the damp. These people belonged in hot climes. It would be a kindness to return them to the backward place they came from.

We all looked at each other for a good while – pondering what next. A loss for words on both sides before the darkie fellow asked me what I was doing in the room.

‘Looking around,’ I told him.

Cheeky blighter tells me that this room – at the top of my house – does in fact belong to him.

‘I beg to differ,’ I said.

He looked puzzled by that. Gazed at me as if I was the foreigner.

‘This is my house.’ I said it carefully so the idiot might follow. But it made no difference.

According to this darkie I could not just come into his room. Somehow I needed his permission. I think not.

‘I can go anywhere I please in my own house,’ I told him. That started him off.

Rent, he shouted. Said he paid plenty of rent.

‘I’m not interested in what you pay,’ I said. ‘This is my house.’

The conversation was over as far as I was concerned. He, of course, had other ideas. Had the nerve to ask me how I got into the room.

‘None of your business,’ I told him. But I showed him the keys anyway. Left him in no doubt as to who had the upper hand. My house, and I’ve a key to every room. But it seemed to be of little importance to this black chappie. Still told me to get out. Raised his voice. Unnecessary, of course. But I’d learned a sharp lesson already from these people – tutored by his foul-mouthed friend downstairs: there was no reasoning with them. Didn’t want any more rough stuff. But I fought a war to protect home and hearth. Not about to be invaded by stealth.

‘This is my house and I’ll go into whichever room I please,’ I informed him.

It was his privacy he started ranting about next. Said he paid rent therefore he deserved – yes, deserved – privacy.

Cheeky blighter had me lost for words. ‘You deserve . . . you deserve!’ What he deserved was to be thrown on to the street. Him and all the other ungrateful swine. He came towards me then. Eyes bulging like a savage’s. ‘I’ll have the police on you if there is any trouble,’ I had to tell him firmly. Put his palms up to me. Submissive. Telling me that he didn’t want any vexation. Said he was only interested to find out what I wanted. But I’d seen all their tricks out in India. Straightened myself up – I was taller than him, you see. Told him, ‘You’re going to have to leave.’

Four times he asked me why. Standing so close I was having to breathe his air. Nothing for it. Notified him in the end, ‘I’m selling the house.’ And, funny thing, he announced to me that Queenie had never told him this. As if she would. Queenie, he called her. ‘This is my house, not my wife’s,’ I said, ‘Not for her to tell you anything.’ Seemed I had hit a nerve. He really started ranting then. It was Queenie he paid the rent to. It was Queenie who let him stay here. It was Queenie he answered to.