by Roger King
The basement living room was music, mellow warmth and colourful cushions on the floor. No books, I noticed. A television was on, and it took me a second to understand that the cheerful French song I was hearing did not come from the newsreader’s silenced lips. Monique jumped up from the floor. “You’re back! I thought I might have frightened you away.”
There was something alarming about Monique at first, a generalised overabundance: vitality, curves, strength, beauty. Her eyes were enormous, her laugh raucous, her speech full of exclamation marks and further emphasised with extravagant gestures from long, graceful arms. I found myself again embraced and suffocating inside her hair before I could utter a single word of response.
“This is my big sister, Gabrielle,” Monique said of the smaller, slighter figure sitting alone on the couch. “And you know Kamara already.”
“Exactly,” confirmed Kamara, giving me a complicated handshake.
Two men and two women. I wondered who was whose. Monique took my anorak and poured wine.
“It’s warm in here,” I said. “Nice.”
“It’s always the tropics at Hereford Road,” said Kamara, with a low laugh, as if there was more to it.
“Come,” said Gabrielle, holding her hands up to me like a mother receiving a child. “Sit next to me. I’m too tired to get up. Have some wine. There’s samosas. Benji’s cooking. You met Benji?”
“Sort of. He was on the phone. You’re a nurse?” I asked superfluously since she was in her uniform.
“A nurse. For better or worse.” She sighed, but I was impressed. Another career option to consider.
I sank into the couch and felt the easy, unselfconscious touch of Gabrielle’s arm resting on mine, the sort of casual, companionable touch I had not felt since Africa. I went silent, unable to speak, the lump in my throat made larger by the pairs of eyes on me. So, I’d been homesick after all and, since I now knew this, it followed that I must now be home. I was determined not to cry.
Later, when I asked Gabrielle how she knew Benji and Kamara, she said it was the same way she knew most men, through her younger sister: “Benji is an ex-boyfriend of Monique. Kamara is an ex-boyfriend of Monique. She brings them home like a cat with mice, drops them here and they stay forever. They become family. There were twelve of us in Mauritius, so we need extras to make up the numbers.”
“You mean they live here?”
She turned to call across the room. “Kamara, do you live here? We’re not sure.”
“In fact I have my own home, thank you. I just come here for political asylum.”
“He doesn’t live here. We’re just his asylum. No, don’t worry, it’s just the three of us.”
“Three?”
“Yes. Me, Monique and you. Silly.”
Benji did not look me in the eye once while he served food and refilled the glasses, though he told me later that this was because he noticed me too much. I caught myself drifting out of the conversation to try and place him. His voice was low and pleasant and, like mine, his English was without an Indian lilt. Nor did it seem exactly like an Englishman’s, lacking any distinctive local accent. It was a bland international English, almost like an educated East African Asian, but not quite. I watched him. He was courteous and self-effacing, as if he was amusing himself by playing the part of a superior waiter. The white shirt with the rolled-up sleeves spoke of days spent in an office. Around forty, hair thinning. A fierce black moustache that wrestled with a boyish smile for the claim to personality. Fit, prosperous, puzzling, nice. In control, I thought. I wanted him to talk to me so that I could be done with my curiosity.
“And what do you do, Benji?” I finally asked after Monique had finished explaining that her job as bilingual secretary at the Commonwealth Secretariat was the effortless consequence of her Mauritian heritage: French, English, genetic allure.
“Yes, Benji,” echoed Kamara, “What do you do? We’ve always wondered.”
“You know what I do. Business. A little bit of this and a little bit of that.”
“He always says that,” confided Gabrielle. “He likes to be mysterious.” To Benji, she demanded, “Bits of what? Details! Details!”
He grinned. “It’s not mysterious. It’s just business. I do some import-export. I help some Arab friends with financial instruments. I teach badminton evening classes —you know that. Next month I’m acting in a play. I’m helping someone start a nightclub. Lots of things. Whatever comes up. It’s all connections.” He laughed at our sceptical faces.
I stared, somehow thrilled by his easy way with England, but I must have looked too intently or too admiringly, because he said, “I can see that Marcella understands. The rest of you only know about government jobs and regular wages.”
“We’re the honest workers,” replied Kamara, slipping into role. “Not the exploiters.”
“I was in business too.” I broke in. “At home. In Tanzania.”
“You see, she understands. A bit of this and a bit of that?”
“I had taxis in Dar-es-Salaam. And an ice-cream business on Zanzibar.” Then, because this list seemed too short, I added, “And I helped run a bar.”
“And what are you going to do in London, Marcella? Are you staying here with us?”
Everyone seemed interested in my answer to this question. Carefully, I said, “I hope to stay. I’m not sure what I’ll do. Maybe some sort of business.” I kept my eyes on Benji when I said this, which almost made it a plea.
He replied, “Well, don’t think of taxis. Too many regulations. You know drivers here have to take a test proving they know every street in London. And have you noticed something else about London taxis? They never have dents. Dents are illegal. Minicabs are a better business.”
At which point the doorbell rang so that no one noticed my disarray. Minicabs? Dents illegal! My mind rushed to my dear battered Peugeot 304’s in Dar with their bodywork like crushed foil, and it suddenly seemed that everything I thought I knew would not apply here. It was a poor return for supporting Benji’s case, to be so reduced and patronised.
I held on to my irritation until the end of the evening, which finished with our doing the washing-up together in the flat’s inadequate sink, Benji washing and me drying. “So, why,” I asked, “are you so secretive about what you do? You have something nasty to hide?”
“People don’t always need to know everything. Discretion is the better part of valour, as they say. You don’t like secrets?”
“I hate secrets. They remind me of Zanzibar.”
“Well, I don’t have secrets, anyway. I have confidences. It’s part of doing business. You can ask me anything and I’ll answer. Try me.”
“OK. Where are you from?”
“Ah, that’s complicated.”
“You see! You’ve failed already.”
“All right. I’m from Singapore. But after Singapore I was from Italy. And before Singapore my family came from India. Tamil Nadu. Except for the ones who came from England and Portugal. Is that simple enough?”
“Yes, that’s simple enough.”
“It is?”
“Except for the Italy part.”
“Oh, a job there. And a wife.”
“And ... what have you done with the poor woman?” “I’m divorced. She’s still there. With my two sons. And you? What’s your family background?”
“None of your business.”
But of course I relented. I even told him of my newly revealed Arab mother and orphan status, and how odd it felt to think of myself in this new way. He summed up as we worked to fit the last of the plates into the overcrowded cupboards: “So, we’re both godless business Indians with Portuguese names, once displaced and twice removed.”
“Both from little islands too.”
“Despotic little trading islands run by people not like us.”
“Who’s like us?”
“Good question.”
“And there’s no trade on Zanzibar these days. Not since the Arabs were c
hased away.”
“Well, you’ll find them all in London. All the Arab business is done in London now. You should feel at home. Look,” he added, wiping his forearms dry, “we’re the same colour.” He held his arm next to mine, touching from wrist to elbow, and I pretended to study them, while thinking, “Oh, god, oh god,” reason lost to the tingle of it.
They were a match: identical in colour, his the perfect male version of mine, the same fine bones but shaped with more muscle and covered with a coarser version of the same black hair.
“'You see,” he said, “the same.”
“Almost,” I lied, and tore my arm away, an act of will equivalent to stripping it of surgical tape. I added, “We’re finished. Let’s go and join the others.”
DEAR BENJI, IF YOUR REASON FOR KEEPING PEOPLE INthe dark is to make them think of you more, you are doing a good job on me. There’s nothing in Vermont to remind me of you. You would hate the quiet and the snow. Well, maybe not the snow. I don’t know about the snow. I should be thinking about you less, but I’m thinking about you more.
This letter is being written only in my head.
I’ve taken out the letter to Gabrielle, reread it and returned it to its envelope. Something is not quite right. Or it may be that the low, dark clouds of recent weeks have caused me to be listless and unable to act, a prey to obsession. I’m tired of putting on layers of clothes just to go outside. Zanzibar keeps appearing in the flames of my fire, Mrs F among them. “It may have been the Moslems who killed her ...” I wonder if she was already dead when they burned the bar. I don’t like the way my mind insists on putting her and Benji together, among the dead ... Benji and his stupid mysteries.
And his stupid tendency to vanish. I was pleased not to see him the day after we first met, and the day after that. I was happy to be left alone to find my bearings, and grateful that he did not immediately come to claim me, because I was not sure I would say no. The flat was busy with visitors and no one mentioned Benji’s absence. During the following days my relief at his restraint turned to annoyance until I casually asked Monique about him.
“Oh, Benji! He is always going off without telling us. Maybe he’s in Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Abbi Dabbi, Rub- a-dubbi—one of those places. Sometimes it’s weeks before he turns up. But he always does. Like a bad penny— isn’t that what they say? Oh,” she added, “did you like him?”
“Not especially, but he seemed to know a lot about London.”
“Benji. We love Benji. But he—you know—slips through your fingers.” She wiggled her lovely fingers to show how.
While Benji went away, Geoffrey didn’t. He called me twice a week, until I insisted that once was plenty, if not too much. He offered to come to London to see me and I replied, not yet. Geoffrey had been a mistake. I was ashamed that I had made my escape from Zanzibar through him and that he was unhappy. What sort of dim bimbo would confuse a passport with love?
“How’s your cough?” he asked.
My cough was so much better that I’d forgotten I had ever had one. “Oh, my cough. It must have been something to do with Reading.”
“I miss you.”
“Please don’t start, Geoffrey.”
“No? OK. Well you know you can come to me whenever you need help, don’t you? I know it’s not easy for new immigrants to get work. Have you applied for your political refugee status yet? I may have a friend who can help you. You can get deported, you know.”
I told him not to worry, that I’d tell him when I was in trouble. Geoffrey was too interested in my difficulties. I felt he wanted me to fail so that he could rescue me.
Something strange has happened to the world. The theories of migration no longer fit the facts. My new friends in London, far from being poor and miserable, were exuberant, happy and busy, while Geoffrey, living in his own country, was ill at ease and crushed. The immigrants were better adapted to England than the natives. Geoffrey, on the other hand, had impressed me with his confidence and vision when he was in Zanzibar, where I had been crushed. I think I have the makings of a new theory here. Maybe these days, everything is so international, there’s always an advantage in being from somewhere else. What is important is not local knowledge, but foreign knowledge. If the whole world is in motion, then the world’s displaced are those who stay at home. And the dislocated are the ones that are at ease. This is appealing. Maybe all the time I was looking for a place to belong, I was already at home. Everywhere but Zanzibar had become Zanzibar.
When the doorbell interrupted my conversation with Benji on my first evening at Hereford Road, the visitor was Monique’s new boyfriend. She had rested her arm around his shoulder—he was several inches shorter than she was, as well as twenty years older—and loudly announced to us all, “This is Adnam. He’s got a Rolls.”
Graciously, Adnam managed to simultaneously offer Monique an indulgent smile and the rest of us a self- deprecating shrug. “I’ve been trying to impress Monique,” he confided.
“I’m sorry for you then,” said Gabrielle. “Come and sit down.”
I noticed, over the years, that something happened to the geometry of a room whenever Adnam arrived in it. Everything turned until it was aligned towards him. On the first night, he refused the room’s only armchair, but we all insisted that he take it; he was too immaculate for the floor or couch, though he argued that he would be quite at home on the floor, perhaps more so than the rest of us given his background. Kamara was the one to take the cue and ask where that might be. “Oh, I grew up mainly in the Lebanon, though my family is Turkish of course.”
In spite of his protest we found ourselves sitting at his feet, except for Monique who perched on the arm of his chair and rummaged through his perfect grey hair. The lines of conversation all went towards him. Even Kamara, who came to profess intense disapproval on political grounds, looked to him first to see the effect of his pronouncements. It was impossible to make Adnam responsible for this. He was polite, good-humoured and said little. Each of us felt we had his attention and that he was sympathetic to our situation. He seemed to adore Monique, the only one apparently immune to this magnetism. “Darling,” she announced from her vantage point, “you have a little bald spot under here.”
From that evening I have installed in my mind a picture of Benji that must have registered at the time as somehow troubling. We are all laughing. Monique’s swan’s-neck arm is gesticulating above Adnam’s head. Gabrielle looks relaxed, her legs folded under her on the couch, Kamara sprawls on the floor, but Benji is intent, determined to prove that he properly appreciates Adnam’s status. He is leaning over Adnam, murmuring something into his ear, much as a sultan’s vizier might posture deference yet also emphasise his own importance. Adnam has inclined half an ear to Benji while smiling happily at the warm commotion around him. I think that Benji is about to remove the untouched glass of cheap red wine by Adnam’s elbow and replace it with one of expensive Scotch whiskey.
The memory makes me shiver. It is a moment when Benji is without playfulness, and his seriousness always seemed false to me, a dangerous act. What he admired in Adnam was the part of himself he secretly treasured and that I feared most. It makes perfect sense that if Benji is lost, it should be Adnam who is able to find him.
With the spring thaw and mud has come the first date of my life. It’s with Ron, the anglophile professor of English who likes my accent. I’ve weakened. It’s my first date because I have never before had a meeting with a man that was called a date.
“If I go on a date, aren’t I dating?” I asked Julia, who was of the opinion that this did not follow.
“No, this is just a first date. You won’t be dating Professor Murdoch until you’ve had several dates. Or you could have dates with a number of people and then you’d be dating too, but not dating a particular person. You’d just be dating.”
What I know of dating comes from watching Love Connection on TV. When the Family Feuds started coming round for the second time, I looked for other sociolog
ically informative programmes to fill my siesta and found Love Connection and The People’s Court. Apparently in the United States it doesn’t matter how old you are, you follow the same system. I’m pushing forty and Ron is probably older, but we should act the same way as teenagers. The point here seems to be that it’s good to be like teenagers. According to the Love Connectionconsensus, the man should collect the woman in a car, should be on time, should bring flowers, should have an evening planned and should pay. The make of car seems to be important too.
By these standards Ron did not do badly, except he forgot about the flowers. Thank goodness. We drove to Brattleboro for dinner and he paid me compliments, another point to watch for.
“That’s a pretty frock,” he said of a modest knitted number. “That’s what they say in England, isn’t it, frock?”
I thought about it. “I think we said dress.” He looked disappointed so I told him that frock was all right too and, in any case, my England was hardly typical since few of its inhabitants were English.
“Frocks,” he repeated. “Frocks and knickers. I love England. This jacket is Harris tweed. I went to London last summer. Reread Dickens, wandered around his old haunts.”
“Oh, I love Dickens! David Copperfield saved my life when I first arrived in England.”
“Yes, I think that has to be his best. Closest to his life. We’ve got a lot in common, Marcella. There’s a sort of formality, a gentleness and honour, you find in England that doesn’t exist in America, don’t you think? The concept of the gentleman. I’ve often thought of living in England. Do you think you will go back?”