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
