Chapter 10 Queenie Nine in 1948

For teeth and glasses. According to next-door neighbour, Mr Todd, this is why so many people of color come to the UK.It's that NHS that got them in, Mrs. Bligh, and of course it's going to keep them flowing at our expense.He might be right, but in his eyes, before those people came here, they were all cross-eyed idiots. I don't think so.I said. Oh yes, he assured me, but of course, they all have glasses on now and perfect smiles. That woman, Gilbert's wife, put the suitcase on the side of the road for everyone to see, and I knew Mr. Todd would come.woman.Not many women of color are seen here.I've seen older women with hips as big as buses, but never young women with slender waists.His head pokes out of the door of the house, then back in again.Probably to put on shoes.

I was right.Gilbert had not brought the suitcase in five minutes before he was at the door.I said: Mr. Todd, is there anything I can do for you? Another black person with that look on his face.A mixture of anger, shock, and even fear, the nostrils dilated, the mouth trying to smile but barely able to sneer.have.Mrs. Bligh, I just want to talk to you about your tenants. I'll just say it.He'd tell his scary sister that more people of color were showing up.They would say to each other: How many are there now?Fifty?sixty?Xiruo, you must speak to her.His sister must have told him, and lamented how respectable the street was before the colored people came.They'd get the words out, in the right, the proper, the finely crafted, the vivid, and the blaming of Queenie at the end.Mrs Bligh single-handedly ruined the country.They were like that in wartime too, but I couldn't blame it then.Too many Poles.The Czechs are rampant.The Belgians immobilized us.As for the Jews.Even though we know what these poor guys have been through, they still resent the Jews.They're all right in their own country, Mr. Todd reasoned, but on our streets he doesn't want to see a single Jew.He never forgave me for taking Jean in.Boomed clean.Her family died.A loved one is blown to pieces in North Africa.Why not take it in?Even if she starts staying out all night and comes in with milk in the morning, she's still a guest.He had the audacity to ask Jean what she did for a living.I told him that he was a nurse, you know, on the night shift.He choked on his cup of tea and asked if I was sure?

Once he asked me three times in one day if I had heard from my wife Bernard just to find out, because they were such good buddies.But I know why he asks.He wants my homeless husband home and an end to me hosting all the bums and scum in the streets.For my sake, he said, a woman lives alone in this huge house.Equal to a living widow.There was no man to protect me, to guide me, to show me my wrongdoing.Mr. Todd said he was doing his neighbor's duty to keep an eye on me.Our own people are to be united as in wartime.But I remember that we were not much united even in wartime. But I am grateful to him (and, I suppose, to his wicked sister).He boarded up the holes in the roof, kept the pigeons away, plastered the ceiling, replaced the window sills, and helped me remove gravel from the garden.When a fuse blows, I know where to turn for help. He has a piece of cardboard with a short cord ready to go and a flashlight handy.I think I owe him a lot.He even went out of his way to decorate the place if I could find paint.Don't let it run down any more, Mrs. Bligh.

When Gilbert moved in, he put an end to it.black boy!I actually took Hei Zai in next door to him.It's not just me.There are others who live near the square.There are a few more along the road.He said his concern was that they would turn the area into a jungle.But I'm glad to see Gilbert.I often wonder about the pilot Gilbert.What happened to Joseph.I now know that people have to live with war.Everyone scattered like dandelion seeds.Some people thought they would never see each other again, especially at the door of their house.I haven't seen Gilbert since that incident.After the incident, I didn't want to see anyone.He wrote to me more than once, but I didn't reply.It's not that I blame him.How can I blame him?I'm sure he thought I blamed him, but I didn't.All I wanted to get rid of was war, but all I lost were people.My parents advised me to move back to the farm until the war was over.How many times have I tried to escape that nasty place?I've escaped twice.I told them no, I had to go back to Earl Lane and make this place feel like home until Bernard came back.

I did write to Bernard in India, telling him all this.But his father was not mentioned in his letter.There was no mention of the next one.He's not the type to talk about things, I know, but it's really annoying!As if there was no such thing.If that's what he wants, then I'll wait until he returns home.Anyway, it's better to look him in the eyes and explain in person.But I miss my father-in-law Arthur.Not just because of his potatoes and onions.And not because of those runner beans.Even if the beans had been boiled for an hour, they would not even be chewed for dinner by the time I brushed my teeth and went to bed.I would tell him to send it to Churchill as a secret weapon; to send it to Hitler's army, they would be too busy chewing beans to fight. Arthur always smiled quietly with a unique expression.

I didn't celebrate VE Day.When the others asked me to put up flags, I told them that my husband was still fighting in the East with a thousand other soldiers.I planted the flag on Victory Day against Japan, but the whole street probably skipped the effort.When the war was over, I did my patriotic duty which was to look as good as I could.I begged some silk stockings from the Blooms, and knelt down and hand-washed the house, and poked my head into corners that had been neglected since the war began.Another neighbor, Mrs. Smith (she wished I had called her Blanche), was also waiting, her husband was returning from a place called Rangoon.We were friends at the time.She'd hug me excitedly and say it won't be long, Queenie, his ship's here, and give me the old box of rouge she had left.The color didn't quite fit, but I took it anyway.My girls talk about daddy coming home.She happened to be going to do something, so she ran over to tell me.Have you heard from Bernard yet?After asking eight hundred times, I said no before she even asked.I watched her husband Maurice emerge.Like a character in some aphrodisiac movies, she ran to her husband's arms, and they kissed in the way of a movie on the street: she lay back in her husband's arms, just like Clark.Gable is the same as Vivien Leigh.Fuck, hope Bernard doesn't want to kiss like that.

Blanche's two young daughters stood looking at their parents.When the stranger extended his arms to them and said he would give Daddy a kiss, the little creature looked frightened and ran into the house screaming. Blanche assured me: it won't be long, Queenie, just wait.Then you can move on with the rest of your life.Forget about this savage war. Two years passed without seeing or hearing from Bernard.The men have all gone home.They come back to walk the streets, chat in bars, woo on park benches, take buses and fill up the lousy seats on the subway.The Operations Department insisted that Bernard had been repatriated.I made an appointment to go to the combat department, and a self-righteous little man stared at me with sympathy in his eyes.His look said: He left you, lady, he left you.But they didn't know Bernard.Bligh: He can't do anything half as fun as running away from home.

Blanche also wondered if he had bumped his head and forgotten who he was and what he did.Perhaps he was wandering alone in the country, looking for a home.Someone who lived down the road was sure to have caught a glimpse of Bernard driving a bus in Glasgow, Scotland.I was going up to Scotland, taking as many buses as I could, but my brother Harry said it wouldn't be too much trouble because a friend of his had spotted Bernard sipping beer in a pub in Berlin.Then Mr Todd emerged with a blurry photograph of a group of trail walkers walking across the Derbyshire peaks.He pointed to a person in the background and said: Mrs. Bligh, this must be Bernard, or I wouldn't be called Siro.To be honest, the quality of the photo is terrible. It could be anyone, maybe even Shiro.Todd himself.Then a guy showed up (riding all the way to the door on a battered motorbike, the engine died twice, almost scaring the faint of heart) and said he knew Bernard, they trained together in Blackpool, but since he After being sent somewhere, Bernard was never seen again.After I said I didn't know where Bernard was, he got flustered.But he still drank three cups of tea and ate the same amount of red currant bread before he got up from his seat and said: I really have to go now, little Taozi.After speaking, he left, and the disgusting motorcycle spewed out dirty and smelly black smoke.

Harry suggested that I begin the process of declaring Bernard officially dead.I asked him: What if he didn't die? That would force him out of his hiding place. I'm still young and I still have life to live.But I'm not ready to do that.So, when Gilbert showed up at my door, I thought: I have a room and I need money.I took him in because Bernard would never say yes.If Bernard has a problem with this matter, he has to come back and say it to my face. Blanche says: A woman sharing a house with people of color?How can you figure it out?She warned me that those people were very different from us and knew nothing about etiquette.They bathe in oil and it stinks.Then I called my husband to persuade me, because he knew everything about black people.Morris blushed and told me about their bestial lusts.And men and women alike, Mrs. Bligh.He warned me that I should be careful and lock the door.You can't understand a single word those untouchables say, let alone believe it.

People in this area may have a very short memory, but mine is not.I've known Gilbert since the war.He served in the Royal Air Force.The boy in blue, like Bernard and flushed Morris, fought for this country.No one wants to take him in.Some of Gilbert's friends had just disembarked, and they came to beg, and I was a little disturbed.I don't like hacking.But he vouched for his friends. Winston was all right, but that brother of his came to my house with such a flimsy pretext that even I could see the daydream in it.Probe into the brain.Even though I was looking straight at him, he was looking straight at my leg.Bestiality, as Morris warned.I told Gilbert I didn't like him, and Gilbert told him to go.He left like an innocent scolded dog, out of trouble.At least I think he's gone They brothers look so much alike.

But Blanche (she now wants me to call her Mrs. Smith) is selling the house.For being mad at me; saying it wasn't her own, but her husband's idea.It doesn't suit him, Mrs. Bligh.He had only just come back from the war, but now the country didn't feel like his own.What was all that for?That's what confuses Morris.She told me that she still has to think about the well-being of her two young daughters.Gilbert tipped his hat to her one morning.She rushed into the house as if Gilbert had exposed his body.Morris came out and stood at the door, defending her honor.And Gilbert just said hello.After that, she never spoke to me again, and always crossed the street to avoid seeing me.She sobbed as the moving company sent her out the door. The house has been in her family name for generations.Her mother, her grandfather, her great-grandfather.Mr. Todd told me.She felt thrown out.Every time she and her daughter walked down their street, niggers peeped at them.She declared that it wouldn't be so bad if Hitler invaded.She moved into the twin house in Branley without saying goodbye to me at all.Some people are talking about me, Mr. Todd told me so.Kind and smiling, as if he said it for my own good.Those people don't know if I'm still as decent as they thought I was. They are just tenants.I told Mr. Todd. But these niggers degrade the quality of the community, Mrs. Bligh.The government should never have let them in.We'll have a hard time trying to drive them away now. So, for the second time, Mr. Todd stood at my door and wanted to talk to me about my tenants.I thought he was coming to complain about how noisy they were when they were moving that dead suitcase in the door. good.What's the matter now? He began: something very unfortunate happened to my sister today I was about to ask him to come in, but I knew he was afraid to set foot in the house. Oh, is it? It turned out that she was walking on the sidewalk.It was raining and she was holding an umbrella.The butcher is about to close, and there are crowds of people around the shop.As she walked, two black women walked toward her side by side.Anyway, they walked up to her, and the sidewalk couldn't hold three of them. I smile.I'd like to see it.I know the type: black-and-black woman with hips as big as a bus.I didn't expect the two of them to stand together. The unfortunate thing, Mrs. Bligh, he went on, was that my sister was forced to step off the sidewalk and onto the road in order to pass them.Those two people had no intention of making way for her. Oh my gosh.It took a long time to get through, but his point was that I should make sure my tenants of color know this: they are guests in this country, so when Brits approach, they should be the ones to step off the pavement . You can tell them yourself if you want.I opened the door for him. He told me: no, no, no need.I leave that job to you.But I just thought that if our fellow citizens of color knew how to deal with advances and retreats, it might help improve the relationship between neighbors and neighbors.