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.” She patted me again, catching her sleeve on a glass and spilling a puddle of beer
