Small Island by Andrea Levy

was the man I thought was Michael. But it was not Michael. It was a stranger.
    ‘What you doing at this meeting? It’s not safe,’ he said.
    ‘Get off me,’ I replied. His skin was darker than Michael’s. His nose was broader than Michael’s. His lips were thicker than Michael’s. His eyes were rounder than Michael’s. His moustache was bushier and his smile was not crooked.
    ‘You hurt?’ he said, noticing my bleeding knee.
    His open mouth revealed a gold tooth that shone from within. I could have screamed. I shooed his hand away as he reached out to touch my leg. To think that I mistook this uncouth man for Michael Roberts. ‘What is all that commotion?’ I found I was shaking. The words did not come out with the force I required of them – they rang with tremulousness.
    ‘Busta speaking.’ I had no idea what this man was talking about. ‘I just come to see what him have to say. But every time we meet there is this rough stuff.’
    I was not interested in his explanation.
    ‘Your foot,’ he shouted, his face grimacing. ‘Your foot is mash-up.’
    Calmly I told him, ‘That is pawpaw.’
    For an instant he gazed on me as if I had mislaid my senses. ‘Pawpaw?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes,’ I replied, offering this man no explanation.
    His gold tooth glared as he smiled. ‘Your mother never tell you pawpaw is to go in your mouth and not on your foot?’ And his smile then became a chuckle at his own joke.
    A young man running to the battle line – his arms laden with two big stones and several branches of a tree – tripped in front of us, spilling his load. From his mouth a stream of cusses poured, turning the air rancid. The man who was not Michael grabbed this cussing man by the throat. Their noses only one inch apart, he said, ‘You no see there’s a lady here? Hush your mouth.’ I feared a brawl would begin in front of me. The man who was not Michael released the cussing man’s throat, pushed him, and for a second these two stood snarling like savages until the terrified cussing man backed away and ran.
    Taking a composing breath, the man who was not Michael looked on me and said, ‘Sorry, Miss, for you to hear such language,’ before his attention was drawn once again to the uproar that was happening in the next street.
    ‘Go,’ I said. ‘I am fine.’
    ‘You sure? I can leave you here? You no gonna come back throwing bottles and roughing up the men?’ Again he laughed at his own joke as he walked away. And as his back rounded the corner I had to shake myself from the belief that I was once more seeing Michael.
    I had sat a quiet vigil for Michael long after the war had ended. The festive balloons deflated, the ribbons lost their sheen. People stopped talking of the shortage of rice and, oh, those miserable days when the condensed milk ran out. Up on the hillside the boats docked below. Even from that distance, if he had been there among the crowd that alighted from the vessels, I would have seen him like a pinpoint of light on a cave wall. Those men who left for the war with spirited cheer returned looking around them as bemused as convicts. In their ill-fitting suits or uniforms that would soon no longer be theirs, they studied the surround as if this were a foreign place – a momentary reluctance trembling in their feet as they stepped on to the dock. Mothers hugged these sons to them while abashed wives looked guilty on the eyes of their returning men. And still he was not there.
    What would Michael look like on an aeroplane? I had no picture to conjure with. Was he inquisitive – straining to make out the curve of a coast far below? Or did he gaze skyward, shielding his eyes against the sun as he counted the clouds that slipped past his view? In England the houses are placed so close together, I had been told, that it is possible to look on your neighbour in the adjacent and opposite dwelling. Was someone staring through a window to see Michael sipping at a cup filled with hot tea? Was