by Tobias Hill
‘What are you doing, running away like that? I’m sixty-three years old. I stand out in the street like a nag while you drink whisky inside and then you make me chase you home. You should be thanking me.’
‘How do you know it was whisky?’ Michael asks, and Wolfowitz grins painfully.
‘I can smell it. It smells nice.’
‘It’s Alan Swan’s whisky,’ Michael says, but Wolfowitz waves away his caution.
‘They didn’t see me.’
Michael finds a step. The flag is cold under him. ‘Best keep it that way,’ he says. ‘I hope this is worth it.’
‘What else was I supposed to do? Don’t show yourself round mine, you say. Wait for me to come round yours. Stay off Columbia Road and the Roman. If something comes up, what can I do?’
Back in the day, before the war, Wolfowitz worked for Swan. It didn’t work out for the best. Still, Alan Swan’s enmity is Michael’s opportunity. The old man makes them both good money.
‘You can use your head,’ Michael says. ‘If Swan hears you’re still working his turf he’ll see to it you’re back inside before you know it. If he hears you’re working for me I’ll break your hands myself.’
‘Michael,’ Wolfowitz says, ‘don’t talk like that.’
But Michael says nothing more. A chill silence falls in the street, and it is Wolfowitz who ends it.
‘Dick Wise stopped by. He’s a sergeant at Leman Street, used to live round your way –’
‘I know who he is. I didn’t know you were chums.’
‘So that shows what little you know, eh? Dick Wise is a good friend of mine. A good friend, not like some.’
‘Let you off, did he?’
‘He’s a soft spot for me. Sometimes we help each other out.’
‘What help did he want this time?’
‘Nothing,’ Wolfowitz says, sullenly. He straightens and brushes down his coat. ‘Just something for his girl. I chose him out a bracelet, nothing special, you wouldn’t have got much for it.’
‘And what do we get for our bracelet?’
‘Dick says to take things slow. His men are all stirred up. A day or two, they’ll be crawling all over the place. They found a man, done like that one in Bacon Street, back in the spring. Cuts.’
‘Dead?’ Michael asks, and Wolfowitz clicks his tongue.
‘Of course dead! The police don’t budge if not, do they? It’s no news being alive, is it?’
His voice has risen. Michael gets up. ‘I’ll walk you home,’ he says.
‘Don’t do me any favours.’
They come onto Old Street. Wolfowitz walks along in silence. Now and then he tugs his coat like a bird ruffling its feathers. Michael is glad to see it. The old man needed ruffling.
‘Alright,’ he says. ‘We keep our heads down. You’ll lay off the streets, keep your hands to yourself. How long for?’
Wolfowitz shrugs. ‘Might be a week. Dick can’t say more than that.’
Michael gets out the pound note. He can see the old man watching, his eyes hungry in the gloom. He takes it quick when Michael offers it.
‘Obliged,’ he says, and then nothing else until they reach his lodgings.
Michael looks up at the building. The windows are thick with grime, or broken or boarded up. Here and there, light comes through rakes in old blackout paint.
‘There’s a young fellow in your room now,’ Wolfowitz says. ‘He was a tank gunner in Africa. He’s that kind who seems to miss it. Fighting drunk all hours. A nasty piece of work.’
‘No change there, then,’ Michael says, but Wolfowitz shakes his head.
‘Michael. You’re better than you know.’
They wait while the old man fumbles with the latch.
‘They found him up by your manor,’ Wolfowitz says, ‘the man.’
‘Where?’
‘That stretch of waste by you. Dead a while, Dick says. Still, you’ll look out for your girls, won’t you?’
‘I look out for my own,’ Michael says, and adds a goodnight, and turns for home.
*
Clarence is underground. He sways out of time with those around him. They all rush onwards through the darkness.
No one is smiling except Clarence. His eyes are lidded and his smile is crooked (You smile like a pirate, his boy says). The folks around him hold on tight, they set their feet and their faces to say nothing, but Clarence leans into the sway and his face says everything. He almost looks as if he’s dancing.
He’s thinking of the trick of chess. The trick – or so he thinks today (and why not this morning, when Solly had him licked in ninety?) – the trick is to be asking questions. As long as you keep asking you don’t have to be answering. And answers? Well, you might not have them. The Answerer on Twenty Questions, he always knows the secret, but that’s just a parlour game for every manjack with a wireless. Chess, now, that’s the sport of kings. In chess no one holds all the answers. And that’s why you want to be asking the questions.
Next Saturday, Clarence thinks. Next Saturday I’m doing the asking.
He’s not made for the Underground. He has to stand bowed so deeply that his backbone aches. It’s better if he can sit and sometimes, as the train heads northwest, seats come up near enough to take; but Clarence lets them pass. He’s young and strong – he could stand all year – but the truth is, he chooses to stand because elsewise folks will look at him. He takes the ache over that look.
This country, Clarence thinks. It wants you shy. It wants you humble. For any gift you’re born with it wants you to apologise. But what should he be sorry for? And how can he ever be shy? People have been looking at Clarence ever since he was eight years old and started to put on his height. The more they looked the higher he got. The looking up – oh, he likes that. Those looks are all awe and laughter. They feed his pride. They make him stand taller.
The look he’ll get if he sits down, that’s different. That’s the English look. There’s nothing you can do about it; the English look’s too sly for that. It flits away if you try to meet it. It’s a fly on your back if you try to catch it. But sooner or later, if he sits, someone will cut their eyes at him, and their look will be accusing, as if Clarence has taken something that was never meant for him.
His grandfather was Scottish. Clarence gets his height from him. He used to tell Clarence and Neville stories of London and the Highlands. Clarence would like to see the Highlands, one day, but London is the place for him.
London is the place for big men, the old man used to say, ruefully, as if he hadn’t measured up himself. But isn’t Clarence a big man? A big man needs a big city. If Britain is the mother country then London is the mother city. Clarence loves it for its might and clamour. The war has worn it down, but it’ll haul itself up again. Clarence can help, he knows he can. Isn’t he strong enough?
The English, though . . . if they spoke their minds then Clarence could talk to them. But the English don’t speak their minds, not in company. Their minds are hush-hush, like their homes. An Englishman’s mind is his castle.
I fought for my country, Clarence wants to tell them, when they give him that look. But he never does. It wouldn’t be true anyway.
At Camden Town he surfaces. It isn’t far to Neville’s place and he’s early, so he wanders. After the Tube it feels fine to stretch his legs and breathe easy, and there are costers on Inverness Street, fruiterers and mushroom men, with stragglers towards the Lock, Greek fly pitchers and jumble sellers, a Caymanian he knows by name, and a chestnut roaster down in the mouth, hankering for colder weather.
There’s not much warmth in the day, but Clarence takes off his hat and walks with that in one hand and, in the other, a bag with a banana and some dumplings Bernie has made. It’s something to have dumplings again. The week that bread came off the ration Bernie cooked up a fete.
‘Hey, Nine,’ the Caymanian calls, and Clarence stops and talks a bit. Not overmuch – the island men mostly keep each to their own, like the English, I
rish and Scots – but the Caymanian knows Kingston and he always has some news from home.
King Nine Hand is what the boys call him. They all make with these names, the new boys, Lord this and Admiral that. Clarence has no time for Lordships and Admiralties, he’s too old for vanity, but the boys went and named him anyway, just like the costers did. Nine Hand is from the time Clarence heard the Moresby, the banana reefer, was due in early at Southampton, and going down to Waterloo to wait for the banana train he was first in line for the best haul London had seen in months. For once the porters had no call to send him off empty-handed, but the Irish crew that was on that night always sold him short when they could. Instead of no bananas, they told Clarence there were no crates – the whole greasemonkey gang of them all trying to wipe the grins off their faces, with crates piled around them. So Clarence bought the biggest bunches they could fetch, all the fruit he was licensed for, two monster nine-hands, and hoisted them up and carried them off as if they weighed nothing at all – sixty pounds on each shoulder, like the spoils of war. He hardly got them home, and they put his back out for days, but the story got around.
It’s not a bad part of town, Camden, with the narrowboats in their company colours, bright diamondbacks and gaudery out of another time. Clarence has looked into settling here, but Inverness Street is too small, pitches are hard to get, and the place has its own banana king. Bernie isn’t keen, besides. She likes the Columbia Buildings, which are grand old things, alright. And Neville vexes her.
Quarter past one by the timber yard clock. That’s a good time for Neville. He worries over numbers, now. The big ones trouble him.
Clarence cuts back through Inverness and on, southwest to St Mark’s Square. He rings and leans by Neville’s bell. An Indian child on roller skates labours past the steps, alone. Two men move among the ruins of St Mark’s. They are tearing down burned stones, leaving of the bombed church only that which remains sound. Clarence looks beyond them and for a moment his spirit fails. Despair fills him.
The sky is dull as a dead hearth. The sun is desolate. It gives nothing away: no light, no heat, no strength or comfort. Clarence’s boy knows, by heart, the true distance of the sun, its tens of millions of miles. In England that’s how it feels. And the people, too, they feel the same.
They come on him sometimes, these moments. Moments are all they are. Clarence has learned to live with them. He has the measure of them. Look: he rolls his shoulders – on he goes. A man should have pride in himself. It’s what Bernie expects of him. It’s what she looks to him for.
Clarence is her sun.
The door opens behind him.
‘What time is it?’ Neville asks, dustily, and Clarence smiles and turns.
‘One and some.’
‘Fine, then,’ Neville says, ‘come on up. Come in, come in.’
*
On Neville’s dining table sit:
An open tin of Kiwi black;
A Tate and Lyle treacle tin with one last scrape still left in it;
A pair of shining, shoehorned Oxfords;
A wrapped nub of Nutter fat;
A jelly the colour of cement;
Three yellowed stacks of cuttings, one taken only from The Times, one from the picture magazines, and the last – yellowest of all – from The Jamaica Gleaner and The Barbados Advocate.
Clarence stands over the table, looking down at everything.
‘Neville? You making jelly?’
‘What?’
‘What’s this jelly here?’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ Neville calls through. ‘That’s what folks call donkey.’
Clarence pokes the donkey. ‘You eat any of this thing yet?’
‘What does it look like to you?’
‘Looks like you went and made the worst jelly I ever saw.’
Neville comes stalking in. He’s better when he’s worked up. He looks more himself again. Besides, Clarence has been working him up for thirty years, and he isn’t finished yet.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it,’ Neville snaps. ‘It’s donkey, it’s not required to win any beauty contests.’
‘Good thing too. So, when did you start on all this cooking?’
‘I get hungry, I cook just fine. Any tomfool can follow a recipe.’
‘Looks like you put grout in it.’
‘That’s oats – don’t poke it, man. My God. Why don’t you go make some tea?’
‘Who, me? You’re the chef.’
Neville makes the tea. Clarence pulls out the dining chair – there’s only one: Neville’s rooms are furnished with one of each necessity – and leafs through the cuttings, listening to the intimate succession of water, kettle, match and flame.
‘Are those bananas I see in that bag there?’
‘Dumplings from Bernie. Might be a banana too, if you got coupons for it.’
‘I have coupons for teaching little brothers manners.’
‘Not so little.’
‘Coupons! How’s that boy of yours?’
‘Not so little neither.’
‘Still reading, still growing?’
‘That’s all he does.’
‘Working hard? He better be ready for that examination. Any nephew of mine has the mind for grammar school.’
‘Let him be, he’s got a year still. He made another friend. You know Solly took in a boy? His wife found him living rough. Had some foxhole to sleep in.’
Neville spoons the tea leaves. ‘Sounds like trouble,’ he says. ‘Listen, do me a favour before you go. Check my bed for bugs. I think I got some bites. They got so bad downstairs the folks sit out on the steps half the night.’
‘I’ll check.’
‘Silverbacks, too. The other week one fell on my bed. They smell bad, those things.’
‘I’ll check,’ Clarence says.
He glances up from the cuttings (“Windrush” Settlers Sing “Calypso”; How an Atomic Bomb Works; The Flying Miss Coachman Takes Gold?) and peers into the kitchen at his brother. A big thin figure of a man – too tall to fly, the air force said, but gave him his chance in the end – in braces, stooped over the ring. The clothes mangle inside the door, the draining board heaped with clothes, the tea caddy perched beside them.
Orderly, ordinary things. It looks like a life that works, Clarence thinks, a life that goes on. Lonely? Alright. A bachelor’s life, like that of most island men in London, but nothing worse than that. Nothing broken or past mending.
But he’s wrong. He’s overlooked the burns, the pinched, pink skin which discolours Neville’s hands. He’s ignoring the clothes. The heap of washing is all dark. There are shirts in the pile, collars and vests and underclothes. None of them are white. Clarence doesn’t know where Neville gets these things – Bernie says he must dye them himself – but Neville won’t wear white any more. He says it would be dangerous.
He’s still thinking of Neville when he turns back to the cuttings and comes face to face with himself.
There is his regiment. There’s him, four years younger: Neville has him circled. Clarence is standing to attention. He remembers doing it, the thump in his chest and the crick in his neck.
He’s down at Parade, one of many, but the tallest in the ranks: perhaps that’s why the photographer has let the shot fall on him.
The crowds are heady in the sun. His family are in Kingston for him: Clarence looks for them, but there’s sweat in his eyes under his cap, and all he sees are papers fanning, higglers selling, faces cheering. The Carib Regiment is leaving for Virginia. They’ll be trained in America, and then they’ll be sent to do their duty, to fight for King and Empire.
Clarence feels a heat rising into his neck and cheeks. His eyes fall across the words.
. . . Its ultimate destination is, like that of any other fighting unit, unknown, but on whatever field, it is determined to acquit itself worthily. To fight in the common cause, alongside forces not only of Great Britain and the British Empire but also of America, is to have been admitt
ed into the wide comradeship of arms. The activities of the 1st Caribbean Regiment will be followed with the keenest interest by all within the West Indies. They take with them the fullest confidence of those left behind, and they hope to prove worthy of that confidence.
In Virginia they were told nothing. They listened to old news and rumours. The Allies had crossed into Europe. The Americans were moving out. And then, finally, they were on their way, the full twelve hundred men of the Caribs; Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Guyanese, small islanders.
When they boarded ship again the word was they were bound for Normandy. Already, then, they were sick of the sea and bored past time of the months of waiting. Restless at night, gambling or praying. Fearful of the pitchblack decks. Sitting on their bunks, intent. Boys making something of themselves: dead men or damaged men or old men, but men. Young islanders and mainlanders in the oily dark, waiting and wanting: waiting to reach their destination, wanting to be part of something. The wide comradeship of arms.
They never saw Normandy. The troop ship docked at Naples. Italy had already fallen. For six months they trained for war again at the foot of the Vesuvius. Then they were assigned as guards, escorting German prisoners down to Port Said. And then?
And then they trained for war some more. They marched into the desert – where the hulks of Italian tanks still stood like ancient ruins – while a thousand miles north Hitler made his final stand. And then?
And then the war was done. None of them had ever seen it. They had not been wanted. Or had they not been trusted? Had someone played a joke on them? Or a trick? Yes: a confidence trick. They had been sent in confidence, but no confidence had been placed in them. They had promised their lives and found them unwanted. They were sent home safe and sound, but shamed. They were left still waiting.
‘You should be glad,’ Neville says at his shoulder, and Clarence looks down at his hands and sees the cutting is still there, intact, not crumpled and torn. He had thought it was.
He folds it and puts it back where it belongs.
‘Don’t tell me what to be,’ he says. ‘You don’t know. You had it different.’
