Small Island (16 page)

But for me I had just one question – let me ask the Mother Country just this one simple question: how come England did not know me?

On our first day in England, as our train puffed and grunted us through countryside and city, we played a game, us colony troops. Look to a hoarding and be the first to tell everyone where in England the product is made. Apart from a little argument over whether Ford made their cars at Oxford or Dagenham, we knew.

See me now – a small boy, dressed in a uniform of navy blue, a white shirt, a tie, short trousers and long white socks. I am standing up in my classroom; the bright sunlight through the shutters draws lines across the room. My classmates, my teacher all look to me, waiting. My chest is puffed like a major on parade, chin high, arms low. Hear me now – a loud clear voice that pronounces every
p
and
q
and all the letters in between. I begin to recite the canals of England: the Bridgewater canal, the Manchester-to-Liverpool canal, the Grand Trunk canal used by the china firms of Stoke-on-Trent. I could have been telling you of the railways, the roadways, the ports or the docks. I might have been exclaiming on the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster – her two chambers, the Commons and the Lords. If I was given a date I could stand even taller to tell you some of the greatest laws that were debated and passed there. And not just me. Ask any of us West Indian RAF volunteers – ask any of us colony troops where in Britain are ships built, where is cotton woven, steel forged, cars made, jam boiled, cups shaped, lace knotted, glass blown, tin mined, whisky distilled? Ask. Then sit back and learn your lesson.

Now see this. An English soldier, a Tommy called Tommy Atkins. Skin as pale as soap, hair slicked with oil and shinier than his boots. See him sitting in a pub sipping a glass of warming rum and rolling a cigarette from a tin. Ask him, ‘Tommy, tell me nah, where is Jamaica?’

And hear him reply, ‘Well, dunno. Africa, ain’t it?’

See that woman in a green cotton frock standing by her kitchen table with two children looking up at her with lip-licking anticipation. Look how carefully she spoons the rationed sugar into the cups of chocolate drink. Ask her what she knows of Jamaica. ‘Jam– where? What did you say it was called again. Jam– what?’

And here is Lady Havealot, living in her big house with her ancestors’ pictures crowding the walls. See her having a coffee morning with her friends. Ask her to tell you about the people of Jamaica. Does she see that small boy standing tall in a classroom where sunlight draws lines across the room, speaking of England – of canals, of Parliament and the greatest laws ever passed? Or might she, with some authority, from a friend she knew or a book she’d read, tell you of savages, jungles and swinging through trees?

It was inconceivable that we Jamaicans, we West Indians, we members of the British Empire would not fly to the Mother Country’s defence when there was threat. But, tell me, if Jamaica was in trouble, is there any major, any general, any sergeant who would have been able to find that dear island? Give me a map, let me see if Tommy Atkins or Lady Havealot can point to Jamaica. Let us watch them turning the page round, screwing up their eyes to look, turning it over to see if perhaps the region was lost on the back, before shrugging defeat. But give me that map, blindfold me, spin me round three times and I, dizzy and dazed, would still place my finger squarely on the Mother Country.

Thirteen

Gilbert

‘A little birdie tells me you can drive a car, Joseph,’ Sergeant Bastard said to me.

‘No, sir,’ I replied.

You think it would have pleased me to be able to look this man in the eye and say, ‘Yes, that little bird was right.’ To watch his amazed features assessing this information, to see him gazing upon the heavens puzzling: ‘Could it be that not all darkies are daft?’ But I had no time for this brotherly generosity. This was a private conflict. It was a desperate liar who said, ‘No, Flight Sergeant, I cannot drive.’

Come, let me explain. Louise Joseph, my mother, realising that the husband she married only provided bread for his family when he was sober (which was generally no more than three days out of seven), determined that her nine children would eat cake instead. A business was born. Conceived and nurtured by my mother and her sister, Auntie May. Be it a light sponge or laden with rum and fruit, my mother and her sister made the finest cakes in Jamaica. Only Jamaica? No, probably the Caribbean, even the world. Cakes for all occasions – Christmas, Easter, weddings, birthdays, christenings, anniversaries, and one time, delivered to the governor’s house, a cake for the death of a dog.

In front of my sober father, my mother insisted her cake baking was just a hobby. She told him, ‘No problem. I just fix up a cake in the kitchen, earn me a little for extras.’ Behind his drunken back my mother and Auntie May ran a serious business, with orders, deliveries, overheads, shortages, labour disputes and taxable income carefully assessed. It was a secret that everyone but my intoxicated father knew – that cake business earned more for her family than her husband ever could. And my Auntie May always laughed that my resourceful mother had even bred her own workers. Seven sisters – bickering, shoving and giggling in the kitchens – would mix, bake, ice and pack. And we two boys, Lester and me, were her trusted deliverymen.

I could drive from the age of ten.

‘Been driving since you were ten, that’s what I’ve heard,’ the bastard went on.

‘No, Flight Sergeant. That is someone else.’

It was cake that sent Lester and me to the private school, St John’s College, at the age of fifteen. Cake that saw us educated beyond thinking driving and delivering was any sort of suitable work for a scholarly man. Opportunity called Lester to America, which left me, a frustrated prisoner, behind a wheel. I had dreams of attending a university, studying the law and acquiring a degree. But my station was lowly – my ideas soared so high above it I could see them lamenting and waving goodbye.

It was my auntie May suggested night school. ‘Gilbert, your face so long it souring me milk. Go, go.’

Night school in the city. Oh, I bit at the hand that fed me. What of sacrifice, what of obligation, what of family? Duty, tell me of duty. I was as ungrateful as my fickle brother. Six days my mother cussed me until, on the seventh, sensing her defeat she suddenly regained her artfulness and said, ‘Son, why you no teach your sisters Doreen and Pearl to drive? Then you can go.’

Elwood rubbed his hands together with joyful giddiness at having his boyhood friend back. You see, he lived near Kingston. He told me, ‘You can help me and Mummy around the place a little and we feed you up.’

And I told him, ‘Yes, and in the evening I would go to night school.’

We toasted the arrangement with the cake my mother had made me. It was a deal, it sounded good. Until early the next morning when Elwood showed me to his truck. Part metal, part rubber but mostly held together with prayer. ‘Gilbert, see there, you deliver me produce.’ It was a man-eating truck – my head got trapped under the hood, tying, pushing, banging and poking so it might work for another day. I had no time for night school. The only law I learned was that of the combustion engine.

A wireless operator/air-gunner or flight engineer. With my excellent cake-baked education and my exemplary grades in all exams, those pompous men sitting in the recruitment office in Kingston had told me that, when reaching England, I would be trained as a wireless operator/air-gunner or flight engineer. I would be a valuable member of a squadron, second only to a pilot in respect and responsibility. With a service record like that, those military men had assured me, once the war was won, Civvy Street would welcome me for further study.

‘It’s good authority I’ve got that you can drive,’ Sergeant Bastard insisted.

‘Not me, Flight Sergeant. No cars where I come from, sir.’ This was an audacious lie and a mark of how grave the situation had become. But with this sergeant believing anything primitive about his West Indian charges, it was worth the try.

Our commanding officer, Flight Lieutenant Butterfield, addressing us West Indians, began, ‘Men. The second front is well under way and our greatest need now is for men on the ground. Some of you, in fact most of you, who had originally volunteered for air-crew duty will need to remuster for your trade training. We need ground staff. You will need to remuster for ground-staff duty.’ So many of us had to remuster that there was a dimming of the light as our sights were ordered to be set lower. Small-island men, like Oscar Tulloch with his hopes of flying through the sky on metal wings, medals pinned to his glorious chest, found himself as he had left his island, with a broom in his hand. James was to be a navigator, he was to go overseas. ‘A navigator!’ Sergeant Bastard smirked. ‘Well, you should know then, Airman, you are overseas.’

‘A posting to the front, Flight Sergeant.’

‘This is the front – the home front.’

‘A battlefield, Flight Sergeant, sir.’

‘Tell them down the East End of London that this ain’t a battlefield.’ The discussion over, James was sent to train for radar. Hubert got clerical duties. Only the college-educated Lenval was lucky. His trade tests no better than any of us but his skin a little lighter, he became a flight engineer.

You see, there is a list, written by the hand of the Almighty in a celestial book, which details the rich and wonderful accomplishments his subjects might achieve here on earth: father of philosophy, composer of the finest music, ace pilot of the skies, paramour to lucky women. Now I knew: beside the name Gilbert Joseph was written just one word – driver. All endeavours to erase, replace or embellish were useless. I knew that combustion engine was going to get me again.

‘I was told wireless operator/air-gunner or flight engineer, Flight Sergeant, sir.’

‘This is a war, Joseph, not a shop. Motor transport. Hear me, Airman.’

See, look, watch it come back. Driver. Yes, sir. I was off to be trained to do something I had been doing since the age of ten. Perhaps Elwood was right when he warned me: ‘Be careful, Gilbert, remember the English are liars.’

Fourteen

Gilbert

Driver-cum-coal-shifter was not an official trade in the RAF
Table of Trades for Aircraft Hands
, but I had been ‘coking’ for so long I felt it should appear. Age limit: none. Vision: blurred. Feet: frozen. At countless bleak and wintry railway stations in Lincolnshire I had shovelled more than my rightful share of the wretched black rock from lorry to truck. Coal dust! That rasping black grit seeped down so far into my hair that when I chewed it felt like the Almighty was scouring my head with sandpaper. My nose blew silt. Through five layers of clothing, including a bulky overcoat, that dust, that granular rock, was tickling my bare flesh when I undressed. A group of us complained to the CO. This coking felt like punishment, we told him. ‘We’re turning as black as Joseph, sir,’ someone said.

Until our CO chastened our mutinous zeal with the words, ‘Our men overseas are going through much worse than anything you airmen have had to endure.’ And a light rain of soot fell from my hair as I bowed my humbled head. But two days later, ‘Joseph, you’re down to sort the Yanks out.’

A nice long solitary ride, pretty girls waving, old men saluting and the legendary Yank hospitality at the end of it. Charlie Denton assured me I was jammy: ‘That’s all right that, Gilbert. It’s a bit of a comfy chair that run.’ Happy he said he was, tickled pink it was me.

My orders were to drive a truck to the US base up near Grimsby. There I was to retrieve ten wooden crates that contained shock absorbers suitable for our Spitfires. ‘Spitfires,’ the CO emphasised, ‘not Mustangs. Make sure they give us the right ones this time.’ How our shock absorbers ended up on a US army base – not even air force – was one of the mysteries of war. But blame was flying back and forth like bullets in a battle. The Americans were ‘bloody Yanks, arrogant sods, belligerent blighters’ for refusing to just deliver the wayward parts to us. No, they insisted someone from the RAF go to their base to identify and certify that the parts were correct before they could be released. This was not the first time this situation had arisen. Charlie Denton went the time before, staying overnight and coming back with enough Chesterfield cigarettes to keep him in best friends for weeks. It was a lucky man who got the cock-up-with-the-American-army run.

‘He’s coloured, sir.’

‘He’s what?’

‘He’s coloured.’

‘Ah, shit. Coloured, you say?’

‘Black, sir.’

‘Yeah, thank you, Sergeant. I do know what coloured means. What the hell are they playing at? Fucking Limeys.’

Now, the building I was standing in had, at a guess, taken only a few minutes to erect. Stuck together with chewing-gum, the only thing separating me from the American army officers was a wall made from a thin piece of board no thicker than the cover of a book. Perhaps if I had been standing in the room with them at the time, the substance of the exchange might have differed a little but let me assure you its audible clarity would not.

‘Shall I send him out?’

‘You said he’s coloured.’

‘He’s British, though.’

‘British! Who cares? British – it’s still trouble. If I send a coloured down to that unit, it’s trouble. Fucking Limeys.’

‘Shall I send him back?’

‘How coloured is he?’

‘Enough, sir.’

‘Ah, fuck. That Limey CO is playing around with me. Allies, he tells me. He may be air force but we’re all in this together, he says. Allies! Stuck-up Limey bastard. He didn’t like me pointing out his stuff’s in the wrong place. Our fault, he says. He didn’t like me telling him what day it was.’

‘Could we get a coloured unit to show the—’

‘No, no, no – am I gonna reorder the entire US Army just because some stuck-up Limey sends me a nigger? Not on my watch. He sent that black just to piss me off. Fucking Limeys. I’ll get him on the phone. These niggers are more trouble than they’re worth.’