by Roger King
“Geoffrey,” I declared, “I’m going to go to London. Will you lend me the money for the train? I’ll pay you back when my money comes.”
“You needn’t pay it back. Why don’t you wait for next week? Then maybe we can both go.”
“I mean go for good.”
“For good! What are you saying? You can’t go to London just like that. You don’t have a place to stay.”
“I’ll find somewhere. I’ll work, do anything.” I thought of Jane on the moors, destitute, and then taken in by sisterly women.
“Marcella, you’re talking nonsense. You don’t know. You’ve no idea how big London is—maybe a hundred Zanzibars. I brought you here. I can’t just let you do that.”
“It was a mistake. You don’t like me being here. You don’t introduce me to your friends, or your family. I should never have come.”
“No, it’s just work. I get tense, that’s all. I’m not used to having someone around. It’s good for me, having you here. I need to learn how to do this.”
“So, you won’t help me?” I was giving up. He was no Rochester and I was no Jane.
“No, I want to help you. I know it’s hard for you. It’s just ... Look, tomorrow night I’m not going to work. Come down to the pub with me, meet some of my friends.”
“I don’t have anything to wear.”
He laughed. “Wear anything. Jeans. People aren’t pretentious in Reading.”
MY VERMONT HOUSE COMES EQUIPPED WITH OLD
books as well as old pots and pans, and furniture. Professors who have stayed here before liked—but left behind—books of poetry, travel in Europe, natural history and fiction. Books about the lives of men I have never heard of are well represented. One is called The Days of a Man and every morning it stares at me in two volumes from the bookshelf opposite my bed. Such a vain title. Two volumes by the author about himself. I want to poke him in the eye.
Mostly, I pick up the books at random, feel their weight and texture, read a few lines and put them back somewhere else, sowing disorder. It’s like partygoing, exchanging pleasantries with strangers to whom you’re unavailable. I run my fingers down their spines too, my tips tingling, as close as I come to sex. The last time was— let’s see—before prison, nine years ago: Benji, several nights before the last night that I saw him. I’ve regretted those several nights when, in ignorance, we chose sleep. I cannot remember Benji with any book other than his Filofax.
It’s Christmas again. Quiet, this time. I would be lonely if loneliness had not long ago become my normal state, the white noise that lets me rest. It would seem wrong not to be in the company of a little regret, a loss in a way. The pleasure of regret lies, I fear, in keeping company with Benji, though he might never learn of it. Benji had the broad chest that Geoffrey didn’t. Its curly hair— greyer than that on his head—was thick enough to snag my fingers. He also had the reckless laugh, an easy movement to his body, a carelessness with consequence. A gallantry. A boy’s unacknowledged need for protection. The unexplained absences of a Rochester. It occurs to me only now that Geoffrey prepared me for Benji, taking smooth chests, idealism and intellectuals off my shopping list.
While I was in prison it was not safe to enquire about Benji. Neither for him, nor me. Since I was deported and made my way here, I’ve continued the silence. If Benji is a sleeping dog, I should probably let him lie. And if my existence is forgotten, I should not remind the forgetters. I imagine Benji living the good life somewhere. The Middle East. Hong Kong. South Africa. Maybe just down the road in New York. If he is dead, why would I want to know?
With everything that’s happened it’s odd that it’s still the early days in Reading that seep into me when I am low. I have been angry all over again these last few days to remember how it was to be made so small on my arrival in England. I was already small and Geoffrey made me smaller. It wasn’t deliberate—he was diminished by England himself—but I might have vanished altogether. My anger rails in protection of the earlier self who did not know her worth or possibility. When Geoffrey was all I had, he was nothing. So I’ve been traipsing the snows in Vermont, going over ridiculous Reading conversations with Geoffrey in my mind, overlooking all the later Geoffries, banging my boots through the sun-glazed crust to make the points. It’s how I know I’m low, when I go back to this.
Anticlimax is the reason. My students have gone to their families for the vacation and everyone seems to have forgotten me. I should have been more friendly to my colleagues after all. They kept saying to me: “We must have coffee sometime,” or, “We must have you over to dinner sometime,” and I kept silent, non-committal, fearing to be overwhelmed with unwanted invitations and probing questions. Instead there have been no invitations.
I told Julia something of this dilemma, and she explained to me, “They probably didn’t mean it. It’s just something people say.” If a hundred ordinary Americans were asked what is the most frequently offered invitation, “We must have coffee sometime,” would be my guess, but of course my colleagues are not ordinary. Apparently “sometime” is never now, nor any future time that might now be fixed. So I’m free for the duration.
Julia never says anything she does not mean. I gather the Mennonites are German and earnest. She told me at the end of the semester that she wanted me to be her mentor.
“Why are you laughing?” she demanded, upset. “How can I be your mentor? What can I do for you?” “You help me. You know the world. None of my other professors know anything about the world.”
“I’m sorry, Julia. I would be honoured to be your mentor.” We were walking and I put my arm around her so that the offence she’d taken turned into a rueful smile.
When we entered the pub in Reading, the man behind the bar had called out, “Hello, Geoff.”
Geoff? It was the first time I’d heard it. My mind had played with “Doctor Geoffrey Sutton” but never thought of Geoff.
“Long time, no see. Pint of draught Guinness, is it? Straight glass?” continued the man, drawing my stare to his immense moustache.
The bar was small, smoky and so full that most customers were standing. Winter coats made people big and soft, and they drew their beer glasses into themselves to let us pass. A juke box played so that talkers needed to shout. Astonishingly, someone was throwing darts into a narrow, wavery corridor between bodies. This was nothing like the Elephant Bar, and these people were nothing like any English I had imagined.
“And for your ladyfriend?”
“Lager?” enquired Geoffrey. “Like the beer in Zanzibar?”
I smiled, nodded like a nitwit.
“Shift up!” said someone, and space was made for us at a table in the corner, next to the door to the smelly toilets.
“Welcome back, Geoff.” But the bearded man was looking at me, not him. So was the untidy middle- aged woman in glasses, the young black man with the overcoat pulled round himself and the two or three others who made up a noisy, boozy human quilt around the table.
“This is Marcella.” Geoffrey threw away the line as if to discourage fuss.
“I don’t know, Geoff,” said the bearded man. “I go to Africa and come back with malaria, and look what you come back with.”
I smiled, hating myself, while Geoffrey pushed his glasses up his nose. “Yes, well, actually Marcella helped me out quite a lot. I had an accident, you know.”
“We heard,” said the untidy woman, looming close. “I’m Yvonne,” she said to me. “Don’t worry about them. The trouble with Geoffrey is he has no diplomatic skills. That’s why he gets hit over the head. He doesn’t understand Africa like we Africans.”
I stared at her, puzzled, and she reached across to pat my arm. “Of course, you probably don’t know. I’m a political refugee from South Africa. ANC? "You must know, African National Congress. Kamara is a political too. Sierra Leone.”
Kamara, wrapped in his overcoat, was chuckling gently, as if Yvonne was a good joke.
“So there are three of us now.” S
he patted me again, catching her sleeve on a glass and spilling a puddle of beer across the table.
“I’m not a political refugee,” I managed.
“Of course you are! It’s dangerous in Zanzibar. Look at what happened to Geoffrey. Geoffrey, haven’t you got Marcella started on political refugee status?”
I looked around the table, caught a leering look from one of the men, and quickly brought my eyes back to Kamara and the familiarity of an African face. “Have you been here long?” I asked.
“Here? In England, you mean? Oh, yes, quite long. More than three years now. Not here in Reading, of course. No, that would not be possible. In London. I am visiting Yvonne, that’s all.” He chuckled again, a habit that seemed to argue that nothing here was real or serious.
More beer arrived. The noise increased. A headache was forming behind my teeth.
“So, you’re in the same field as Geoffrey?” came a man’s voice. “Development?”
I shook my head, at a loss.
“Marcella was in business,” Geoffrey filled in.
“Well, that’s nearly the same thing,” conceded one of the men.
“I don’t think so! Almost the opposite, I would say,” insisted Yvonne.
I closed my eyes, and would have liked to close my ears, while voices batted my life between them:
“Isn’t Zanzibar socialist?”
“Are you East African Asian, Marcella?”
“A mixture? No wonder she’s so beautiful.”
“I hear the IMF has been causing trouble in Tanzania. Structural adjustment. How are things in Zanzibar?”
“Difficult.” Geoffrey jumped in. “The IMF puts pressure on the government in Dar, and Dar pressures Zanzibar. Very divisive. It creates the conditions for a liberation struggle and Western-sponsored repression.” Was this my home they were talking about?
“The old neocolonial one-two,” someone confirmed in a drawl. “Set ’em up and knock ’em down.”
Not wanting to hear more, I turned back to Kamara. “What do you do in London, Kamara?”
“Myself? Oh, I have a job. I work for the local government. They pay me quite well, actually.” He was amused by this too.
“Could I find work in London?”
“You want to come to London? You want to leave Geoffrey already? "You want to break his heart?” He laughed. “Certainly. I don’t think you will have a problem. I can find you somewhere to stay, if you like. Now that I think of it, I know two very nice girls—women, actually—who you could stay with. They would be delighted to have you, I’m sure. I don’t see why not. Very hospitable. I sometimes stay with them myself. They are from Mauritius—I don’t think that’s so different from Zanzibar.” He turned from me. “Geoffrey, one moment please. Sorry to interrupt your seminar. I think you know Monique and Gabrielle in Bayswater. You have met them at least. I want to give Marcella their number. I think they should be friends.”
Geoffrey glanced at me, his mouth still open with opinions on my behalf, then nodded vigorously. “Yes, good idea.”
“You see,” said Kamara. “No problem. Here is my number ... and this is their number.” Kamara’s card read, Latif Kamara, Housing Officer.
Of course it would be the night I had the headache that Geoffrey wanted to be amorous. The beer, the admiration of his friends for me, produced a sudden lust in him. “Slowly, slowly,” I said, but I could not slow him. He pushed me on the bed and pulled at my jeans and underwear. His nose was between my legs, the first time he’d done that, and I could only think that this night of all nights I probably wasn’t very receptive. I tried to bring his head to mine, to cool and coax him, make him make love, but he pushed me down and pinned my knees to my shoulders, so that I searched his face for a reassuring look. But his eyes were closed as if to make me vanish and I gave in to it, relaxing my legs, reaching down to guide him into me. He had never been this big before, not even close. My head was fit to burst, but it was no longer my head. He pumped over me as if the work of weeks must now be concentrated into minutes. He was obliterating me. I closed my eyes and tried to make my own love. He groaned, a long, aching, sad, lost sound that was still continuing when I must have become lost in my own cry, since I next found myself angry and struggling to breathe against the hand that was held across my mouth to silence me, Geoffrey hissing, “The neighbours.”
KAMARA HAD BEEN WRONG: THERE WAS A PROBLEM.I had no money to go to London and the phone numbers in my bag were just numbers. I wrote a letter to my sister Maria asking if there was anything her husband could do to have my savings sent abroad, but I knew he would not help. His Goan clerk’s soul would never let him bend the rules. I was thinking of myself as less and less a Goan and more a free agent moving among the racially committed. I wrote to Mrs F, enquiring whether all was well, but not daring to ask for anything. After all, she disliked Geoffrey, had done everything to keep me at home, and I’d left her with a political mess, my mother and an unwanted soft ice-cream business on her hands. I could hardly expect help from her. And all I could manage for Mummy was a postcard and the news that I was all right, here in England.
Life returned to its cramped dullness after Geoffrey’s single demonstration of passion, and I was unsure whether or not to take up the following Friday’s invitation to the pub. I decided not, and Geoffrey seemed relieved. I began spending less time in bed. I went out more, did the food shopping, and at Geoffrey’s insistence bought a few winter clothes for myself. Nothing expensive. I opened my eyes a bit, started reading Geoffrey’s Guardian from end to end. My dry, unproductive cough became a constant companion. Somehow, on little evidence, I was coming to assume that my time in Reading was limited.
The corner shop where I did our shopping was a little miracle. I made more trips there than were necessary just to study it. Not that I was a valued customer and welcome fellow immigrant. The Pakistani owners looked straight through me as if I belonged to an entirely different species. The miracle was that in a tiny space they managed to stock at least one of nearly everything, from rice to lightbulbs, spices to envelopes, Guinness to every sort of Tampax, frozen chickens to very un-Moslem dirty magazines. Their shelves were stacked and stocked up to the ceiling, with barely room for a single person to pass between them. And, wherever you were, you looked up to see the baleful face of a family member staring back from a mirror.
This shop was stuffed as full as the Zanzibar shops had been empty. It excited me. I checked to see how many flavours of Campbell’s Soup they carried and discovered it was as many as the supermarket (though fewer of each and at a much higher price). When I took one from the shelf to buy, a child came around immediately and replaced it. There was no problem here with supply, I could see—no problems with importing restrictions, bribing officials, or finding transport. The only concern here was satisfying the fussy demands of the spoiled population. I felt I was storing information I could use.
“Dear Marcella,” read the letter. “Since there seems to be no sign of you returning home in the near future, I’ve decided to buy back the ice-cream business from you. The enclosed cheque covers what you originally paid plus a bit more, since you did make a go of it. Isabella is well and says she will write soon, but you know how she is. I can’t say I think you made a wise decision, but good luck anyway. Love from, Stella Fernandez”
The cheque was for two thousand pounds, more than was due to me at the official exchange rate and much more than she could have obtained on the black market. Somehow, against all the rules, she had been able to write a cheque drawn on Barclays Bank in London. I held it to my lips and blessed Mrs F
“Hello?”
I could hear music in the background.
“Hello, my name is Marcella D’Souza, I’m a friend of Latif Kamara.” I was nervous and felt ridiculous to have pinned so much on such a slender hope. “Can I speak to Monique or Gabrielle?”
“Monique! C’est moi!”
“Pardon?”
“Monique. It’s me, silly.”
“I’m Marcella. I wonder if Kamara said anything about me.”
“Kamara? He’s here. Kamara, there’s a woman for you. A Marcella. Sounds ever so nice. Tres gentille.”
Kamara’s raspy voice was in the background, and his laugh.
I broke in: “No, he said I should talk to you.”
“To me?”
“About staying?”
“Staying where?”
I heard the clink of bottle on wine glass near the receiver. I took a breath, hope running out. “With you, I think.”
“Oh, he says you’re from Zanzibar. Is Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean, like Mauritius? I thought so. Of course you must come and stay with us. Gaby, we’ve got a new sister from Zanzibar. She’s coming to visit. Goody! When are you coming? Oh, Kamara says you’re Indian. Is that right? We’re Creole—we don’t know where we came from.” Monique’s peal of laughter started at the phone and trailed away to include the rest of the room.
“I’m Goan. We’re Catholics.” I thought that was enough.
“Oh, us too. We’re Catholics. Non-practicing, of course. We had the French, you know. In Mauritius. Did Zanzibar have the French?”