Dottie Read online

  ‘Do you like going to the cinema?’ he asked Sophie, his eyes consuming her with a look of agony.

  ‘I love to!’ Sophie said, her face bursting into smiles. ‘But I haven’t been for a long time. Sometimes at the school they showed us a film.’

  ‘Haven’t been? Don’t you worry, my darling. Next time I come for you. And you can have chocolate and ice cream. You like chocolate?’ the landlord asked eagerly. He leant forward and nearly fell on Sophie, hardly able to contain his passion.

  ‘Excuse me, Mister Landlord!’ Dottie shouted.

  ‘All right, all right,’ the landlord said, grinning with triumph and keeping his eyes on Sophie. ‘You call me Andy, you understand? Andreas. But you call me Andy, anytime.’

  ‘Please take your rent,’ Dottie said, holding the money out and wanting him to leave.

  ‘You can come too,’ the landlord said, his look changing to mischief as he spoke to Dottie. He rocked from side to side, holding his arms out at half-cock in an absurd display of his manliness. ‘Or if you need anything for the room, or a little present or something like that. What’s the matter? Don’t I bring you lots of presents? You can trust me, darling. Anything you like. I can give you a lift to work sometimes . . . maybe if we have another bus strike like this one. What a strike, eh? The Englishman doesn’t want to work any more. He just wants to rule the world in peace, and have a full belly and be civilised. He brings in niggers like you from Jamaica to do the dirty work. Everywhere you go you see them: Stockwell, Hackney, Tottenham. Last week I went to see my brother-in-law in Margate and I saw one nigger there. It is a big surprise to me to see a nigger in Margate. English busmen go on strike for three weeks, and their brothers bring in the niggers to take their jobs. Capitalists have no . . . mercy,’ he said, frowning for a moment as he searched for the right word. He took the rent money from Dottie and counted it while he talked, glancing at Sophie now and then in anticipation of the pleasures to come.

  ‘They will be sorry, these Englishmen,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you that. Maybe now they can get the buses running without paying big wages . . . but what about later? What will they do with these nigger people? These are dangerous people, I don’t have to tell you. They will steal white women, and rob the Englishman’s house. They are criminals. England will be ruined. They make everything dirty. I have some of these Jamaican niggers living in my house in Brixton. A nice house before I take them in! I take pity on them. Everywhere they go the landlords say no. No Dogs, No Children, No Niggers. They come to me, and I take them in. As you know, my one problem is too much feeling. I can’t shut the door on this homeless people. I can’t tell them to live in the street. But they turn my house into an African village. They cook in the hall, they hang their washing out of the window. The garden they make into a backyard and they throw rubbish into it. The toilet is no good now. Too full, too much . . . dirt. Every time I go there they are drinking and beating each other. I’m afraid to collect rent for my own house!’

  Dottie swallowed but did not know what to say. It seemed cowardly not to speak. She was not a Jamaican, and she had not met any yet that she knew of. She had not seen the landlord’s house in Brixton, and she could not just accuse him of lying. She had seen enough squalor in her own life to find his description quite believable. None the less she was pained by what the man was saying. It was that way of talking about people like her, for she knew that Jamaican niggers could be effortlessly stretched to include her, as if they were primitive and criminal, only capable of soiling and destroying whatever they had anything to do with. How could that be true?

  ‘Don’t worry, darling,’ the landlord said, seeing the misery on Dottie’s face. ‘You’re not very black, not like them Jamaican niggers.’ He retreated hastily when he saw the look on Dottie’s face. For a moment he seemed puzzled, then shrugged and laughed good-naturedly, and called out a farewell to Sophie.

  2

  Dottie had heard people at the factory talking like that, although most of them treated the arrival of the black workers as something of a joke. She thought they pitied themselves, like condemned prisoners who were resigned to their fate but tried to keep their spirits up with humour. The women she worked with made remarks about finding themselves a decent dancing partner at last, or made crude jokes about warming their beds with one of ’em buck niggers, and availing themselves of their giant physiques of global fame. They told stories and anecdotes of their brushes with these creatures. A couple of black men, for example, turned up at a local dance and tried to find themselves a partner. They were saved from injury by the manager, who intervened to stop what he could see his regular patrons planning. The manager suggested to the two men that next time they should bring black women, for white women found their odour offensive. Another of the women at the factory told a story of a black boarder that her aunt had taken in. One of her rules was no guests, and she could always tell if anyone was breaking the rule because her living room was by the stairs. After several weeks of suspicion – the noise of a creaking bed was unmistakable in a small house – she caught her black boarder smuggling his woman in, carrying her up the stairs on his back.

  Yet many of the women had also been pleasant to Dottie, and even as they told their stories they smiled to reassure her. Let them come, I say. They can’t be worse than this lot we’ve been lumbered with for donkey’s years. I don’t expect they’ll be any better, and I don’t expect they’ll be any worse. Just the same effin’ buggers that men always is, pardon my French.

  The men were inclined to be more serious, shaking their heads at the ignorance and equanimity of the women. Given half a chance they began quoting tales of their wanderings with the forces, when they had seen the shocking propensities of black men and brown men in their natural state. They told stories of whole gangs of labourers falling asleep under trees when left unsupervised, of teeming populations whose slowness of understanding staggered the imagination. They described the deep cunning of these sullen peoples, their incredible strength, which combined with a brutish nature made the nig-nog something of an unpredictable handful. So sure were these men of their judgment and understanding that they did not think to drop their voices for fear of being overheard by anyone who might know better or who might feel forced to take issue with their summaries. They nodded sagely at their words, gathering into a huddle to comfort each other with presages of doom.

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ one of the charge-hands said. ‘Not that I have anything against them personally.’ His name was William Hampshire and he liked to think of himself as a decent man who took everything with a healthy dose of scepticism. People he worked with sometimes spoke of him as a philosopher, and he always tried to be wise whenever he made a contribution to a conversation. No one took any liberties with him to his face, yet quite evidently there was nothing frightening in his manner or appearance. He was short and plump, and when he smiled, the light twinkled off the lenses of his dark-rimmed spectacles and his soft cheeks glowed. His hair was slicked back stylishly, but with enough exaggeration to suggest self-mockery. The women were fond of him because he was polite and gentle, and could put up with any amount of teasing. And because they took pity on him. He was close to fifty and still lived with his mother, and rode to work on a moped. Hampshire had not been out of England in his life and saw nothing to be ashamed of in that.

  He had spent the war years as a clerical officer at the Moorfield Hospital, first in the ambulance station and then in the sterilising unit. When he was called up, he told the recruiting office straight out that if they put him in a combat unit he would declare himself a conscientious objector and go to jail if necessary, so they made him a medic and posted him to the Moorfield, if that was all right with him.

  He was not afraid to say that he was more comfortable in the company of women than men, and he had unconsciously adopted their gestures and mannerisms. To someone who did not know him, his bearing would have seemed like an inept parody of effeminacy. He tossed
his head when he was irritated, and he had a habit of holding his arm out when he was in a hurry, as if he was lifting up a skirt that was impeding his calves as he swept out of the room. When he had to say anything unpleasant, he lifted his chin and raised his eyes towards the ceiling, so he would not have to look at his listeners. He did this as he spoke about the black workers, looking away from Dottie who was standing on the edge of the group.

  ‘Not that I have anything against them personally. For all I know they are fine people,’ he said. ‘If you like that sort of thing. And of course, there are plenty of people who think they can handle them, who think they understand their natures. But their methods are not the kind that I would want to see practised in England. All that colour bar, and reservations and identity cards business. I have no time for colonials, anyway. Lord Muck riding the range and swopping wives with his neighbour. They give themselves such airs when everybody knows they are not the genuine article. Quite honestly, though, I don’t see why we are bothering with these coloured workers. We’re only making a rod for our own backs. Haven’t we done enough to help them already? Can’t we look after ourselves for a change? If it was up to me I’d send them all home tomorrow.’ The men around him chuckled, sympathising perhaps but also knowing that such solutions were not possible for Britain. The Germans or the French or other foreigners might do that kind of thing, but the British, bloody-minded though they were, did not chase people out of their country.

  Dottie had been on buses with the new conductors, and she had seen them laugh and chat with the passengers as if they had done this all their lives. To see people talking to them so comfortably made Dottie wonder if it was the friendliness of the passengers that was a hoax or if the people she worked with were unusually gloomy and critical. Perhaps the passengers were lulling their guests with conversation in order to laugh at them more fully. She overheard some of the questions the conductors had to answer, and they made her cringe, but they sounded more ignorant than anything else. Barbados? Do you have houses there? The conductors laughed and chatted. Did they know what was being said about them?

  She did not see where these fears of the black men turning to criminals came from. They were just making a living. Only the other day she had seen in a newspaper that hundreds of thousands of people had left England in the last year to find a better life in America and Australia and South Africa. Hundreds of thousands! In the same year, hundreds of thousands of others had left Italy and Holland and Germany to seek a better life in other people’s countries. How was it that a few hundred busmen from the West Indies or some Indian or Pakistani cloth-workers in Bradford or Blackburn was a national catastrophe? This seemed absurd to her. She suspected that if she tried to say this to them, she would not have the words to say it right. She had no education, and if she got something wrong they would only make her feel her ignorance, rub her face in it. What could she say to them? They loved to see themselves as the long-suffering, put-upon victims of her kind of people: heathens and menials who were nothing but trouble from the day Europeans ran across them living in a tree and chucking fruit at each other. After all the sacrifices the English had made for them, all they could think of was to come to England to wring the last drop of blood out of Britannia’s withered dugs. No wonder people were emigrating.

  3

  Sophie’s new school was in Wandsworth, and for the first few mornings Dottie took her all the way there. It was a special school for slow people who could not read and write, Brenda Holly had said, hesitating and looking stricken before choosing slow out of the range of words available to her. Sophie hated it, but the sisters talked it over between them and decided that it would do her good if she stayed there until she had learned to read and write properly, or, if she got too fed up, until they could get Hudson home. Dottie took Sophie to the library to show her the books she would be able to read once she had mastered the art, and told her of the treasures that lay hidden in them. She thought it would encourage her, and perhaps also she wanted to show off her knowledge.

  Dottie herself went to the library regularly, and found comfort and virtue in both the place and the self-discipline of her observances. Sometimes she just looked at the books and got nowhere, looking and looking because she had nothing else to do. She wondered if the women working in the library, who mostly looked as if they had a heavy enough burden to carry, minded people like her, people who wandered aimlessly among the shelves, sheltering from the desert winds. What did they call people like her? Customers? Punters?

  Often the old black man was sitting at his usual place, stroking his white beard and poring over the newspaper. He looked out for her, she knew that now. When he saw her he rose to greet her in his habitual way. One day he lifted up the newspaper and pointed to a headline which read: Army Loses Control in Algeria. His face was radiant with triumph. He pointed to the headline again, grinning and shaking his head. She nodded as if she understood what he meant, and promised herself that she would look up the place in the encyclopaedia when the old man was not around. They saw him in the street sometimes. His eyes always sought out Dottie, even though the two sisters now went everywhere together. He made no attempt to speak to them or to extend their acquaintance in any way. When they passed in the street he paid his homage in the same extravagant way: a small bow and a raised hat. When she was on her own, sometimes, he tilted his neck forward and dropped his head a little, in a gesture that looked painful and penitent.

  Dottie wondered what he would have looked like as a young man. He was still tall and upright, although he walked with a stick and took slow, careful steps. It was the joy in his smile and the genial light in his eyes that she found so overwhelming. He was her true fantasy of a grandfather, she thought. She could not imagine what could make a man like him take notice of her.

  She mentioned him to Brenda and saw her eyes dart with suspicion. Brenda Holly did not say anything at first, but Dottie could see that it was only with an effort that she prevented herself from doing so. Her face turned queasy with worry, making Dottie laugh. The more she heard, though, the more Mrs Holly became reassured and interested. In the end, she took command of the conversation and asked many questions, and was free with her advice. ‘I should think he’s an old soldier or a sailor. I wonder where he lives. Did you see which direction he went? There’s an old people’s home down towards Nightingale Avenue. Do you think he’s some kind of a war veteran? You should speak to him next time you see him. He’s probably lonely and could do with a bit of company. I wonder why he treats you like that. Oh you must speak to him, Dottie.’

  Dottie had no intention of speaking to him. The old man overawed her, and had honoured her with his greeting. She wanted to know nothing more about him. She did not want to find out that he was an old soldier or sailor who had led a wandering life of wretchedness and penury. She did not want to be misunderstood, or to find herself burdened. She wanted him as he was, a grand old man whom she met in the street or the library, and who greeted her with friendship when he saw her. If she sought the meaning of his mystery, she would only discover that he was less than she was able to imagine for him.

  Then, in the deep midwinter of 1958, for three consecutive weeks, his chair was empty. She asked one of the women librarians if she knew the old black man who usually sat at the table between fiction and the encyclopaedias reading the paper.

  ‘Dr Murray? He collapsed in here about a month ago,’ the librarian whispered. ‘Sitting there reading the paper as usual. The ambulance came for him, but it was too late. He died in hospital on the same day.’

  Dottie stared at the woman in disbelief. ‘Here?’ she asked, her senses whirling. Tears filled her eyes, and she felt the strength leaving her body. Without warning or thought, she started to sob for her bereavement. She gritted her teeth and covered her face, muffling the sound of her weeping with her hands. The librarian touched her on the shoulder, whispering urgently beside her, agitated with embarrassment. She took her to an inner office and gave her a gla
ss of water, and apologised for her clumsiness. She told Dottie that Dr Murray had had a practice in Clapham, and lived in a large house overlooking the Common. That was all she knew about him, except that he had had a daughter who was a teacher, and who had been killed during the war-time bombing. If she wanted to know more there was bound to have been an obituary in the local paper for such an eminent man. When they looked they found no obituary, and the librarian knew nothing more. She was very sorry, as if in some way the omission was hers.

  Every time Dottie went to the library that winter she thought of the old man. She thought of the daughter as well, and imagined that in some way she had reminded the old doctor of his child. Whenever she went to the library in those months, she felt the absence of the old man’s affection in the midwinter cold. Sometimes she thought of that other old man in Cardiff, whose daughter had disappeared to God knew where. She thought of him with guilt and apprehension, as if one day he would find her and scold her for not seeking him out. Perhaps he was dead too, or had forgotten his wayward daughter many years ago. The thought of her ignorance of the old people her mother had left behind tortured her in the weeks after Dr Murray’s cruel death, but the time passed and, in the end, the pain left her too. There was little enough she could do about any of it, even if she had wanted to.