What Was Promised by Tobias Hill Page A

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 admitted 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