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  • That Polite Way That English People Have*
  • Andrea Levy (bio)

I was sure my coat would be the finest coat in England. Oh, everyone would stare— everyone would admire my long black coat and my black hat with its netting trim set at an angle on my head. There, they would say, there is high-class woman from Jamaica. She is a woman who has one of the finest coats.

I bought my coat from my employer, who had only just returned from England after settling her two sons into a boarding school in a place called Dover.

“Blossom,” she said, in that polite way that English people have, “you will need a coat in England and I have a coat that you may purchase.”

It cost me a great deal of money but Mrs. Roberts informed me that since the war the cost of coats in England had become very high and that this coat I was purchasing from her was the best quality money could buy. I would have, she assured me, no regrets.

I was travelling to England to train as a nurse. And as I would be arriving in England in the month of November, a coat, I felt, would be necessary for keeping out the cold. It was very amusing that the day I purchased the coat from Mrs. Roberts was one of the hottest days I had ever encountered in all my living. Mrs. Roberts allowed me into her bedroom to view the coat in her dressing-table mirror. And there was I on the hottest day God had ever sent wrapping myself in this thick woollen coat. My employer assured me that it fitted and suited me as if it had been made for I alone. I did not keep on the coat very long because the day was too hot.

Later that afternoon I was carrying eggs home for Mamma and as I walked from the shop one of the eggs slipped from the bag and landed on the road. I was surprised to see that as it hit the hot ground the egg started to cook. I had no chance to bend and scoop it back into the shell. All I could do was watch it turn white.

Mamma had shouted at me, as I was afraid she would. But I did not pay it any mind. “Mamma,” I said, “when I get to England I will send you money enough to drop as many eggs as you so desire.

But Mamma was not as convinced as I that travelling to England was the best thing that I could do to secure a good future for myself. She said that leaving Jamaica because the weather was too hot was no reason at all. But I told her that was only something that was in the back of my mind. It was true the weather was too hot for me and I could no longer stand the hurricanes that swept the island and rid us of all the food from the trees. It was true that I trembled in my bed when the earth moved under my feet and flung our [End Page 282] pictures from the walls. But that was not why I was going to England. I was going to train as a nurse. Mamma said I could train as a nurse in Jamaica, that I did not have to go half way round the world to wear a fine starched uniform. But I told her I was going for better opportunity. “Mamma,” I said, “I will live in a nice house with a garden smelling of sweet roses. And I will take tea in the finest teahouses in London where they drink from china cups and eat cake by slicing it with the side of fork.”

Mamma thought I was spending too much money on my passage. But I had worked hard for that money—from the age of sixteen I was a nanny to three English children. And I saved. Every week a small portion of my wage was placed in the Building Society so that one day I could travel to England. Mamma thought I could have...

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