♦
IN MY LIFE
WE WERE ALL EASIER IN THE WORLD THEN. MONIQUE,when I first arrived, embraced me in her dressing gown, all laughter and fluidity. Her cape of damp, springy hair enclosed me. “You caught me,” she said. “Come in. Make yourself at home.”
I was an hour early. Alone, I had taken the sleek Intercity train from Reading to Paddington, and a black taxi from Paddington to Hereford Road, Bayswater. I refused to let Geoffrey come. The whole journey was forty minutes, but because it had seemed so big a journey, I had allowed two hours. I was certain that I was on the point of starting my new life.
“Please,” I said, “can I just leave my suitcase here and come back later?”
“There’s no need for you to leave. We can talk while I dress.”
“No, I want to. I want to see where I am.”
“In the rain?”
“I don’t mind.”
“OK. Comme tu veux. But, Marcella, don’t get lost. And come back for dinner. Meet some friends.”
I closed the door on Monique’s smile and stepped into the street.
On my first night in Bayswater, I was a little ridiculous. I was absolutely certain that as I discovered my new neighborhood, I would, in fact, be discovering my future self. A false step might send me off in the wrong direction for the rest of my life. An unpleasant encounter would mean that all my future would be shadowed by unpleasantness. I held my breath. My feet barely touched the ground. My mind was empty of the past. My eyes, ears and nose were ready at my service. The optimism of youth. The migrant’s faith in rebirth.
Like today, it was February then, and London was wet with a soft rain that hardly seemed to fall. The streets shone with reflected light. I put up the hood of the ugly green anorak I had bought in Reading on Geoffrey’s advice and tied it under my chin. I wanted to be invisible. The wrought-iron front gate clicked shut behind me and I was thrilled to be outside. The paving stones, I thought, were remarkably solid. I turned towards the bright lights of Westbourne Grove and was careful not to step on the cracks, the girl from Zanzibar who shone at hopscotch.
There was a house opposite with an uncurtained window giving onto a brightly lit room, as if the owners wanted to display their lives. At first the room was empty except for a table set with plates, knives and forks, glasses, serviettes, flowers, candles. Then a man in a striped shirt showed himself. He opened up a newspaper, resting it on the table settings, and bent over to read it, leaning on the back of a chair. I felt I was witnessing the secrets of London life. A young woman in a black dress entered, carrying a bowl. She stopped, spoke to the man, who, instead of looking at her, looked at his watch. She put the bowl down on top of his newspaper. While she shook her hair free of a clip and talked, he pretended to continue to read. I saw him raise his eyebrows once, then stretch and walk to the window where he stood with his back to her but looking blankly towards me.
I shook myself free, sorry to have paid the window display so much attention. Westbourne Grove was blessedly busy. People walked quickly or hung around restaurant menus, leaning into each other. Every other vehicle was a red bus or a black taxi. It felt daring even to step into the stream, as if I were a gate-crasher. On the corner was a Greek restaurant. Happily, I could place Greece—we had a Greek on Zanzibar. I hadn’t lost my bearings yet. Opposite was a little corner shop selling sweets and magazines, with an Indian boy at the till. There was a Chinese restaurant and a Malaysian restaurant. A grocery shop with a sign in Arabic script. A shop with new cars behind its window! As far as I could see there were bright shops and restaurants, crowded pavements, cars, taxis, buses. Any one of the restaurants would have been the smartest place on Zanzibar. Chinese, Brazilian, Iranian, a French patisserie. This street was vertigo; I walked carefully to keep my balance. I spotted pedestrians with who-knew-what on their minds bearing down on me and took early avoiding action. To avert the danger of overwhelmment I decided the trick was to file now and make sense later, like a lion gobbling prey to digest at leisure. TSB Bank, Lloyds Bank (two L’s), National Westminster Bank. Pip Printing—a mystery. J. H. Kenyon Ltd., Funeral Directors—out of place.
I stopped where the gorgeous produce of a food shop spread across the pavement like a lolling tongue. Oranges, bananas, yams, ginger, pineapples, tomatoes, bunches of flowers. Fruits and vegetables I had never seen. I looked up to discover the name of the shop: White Rose and then some writing in Chinese, with a rose outlined in white neon. On the opposite side of the street another lolling tongue of plenty spread out from a shop with a sign in Arabic and a promise in English to stay open for twenty-four hours of every day. This street was busy like this for twenty-four hours? I looked at the customers. Pale English in black overcoats, the girls all in
