The notion of English gentlemen sent my thoughts to Lord Cramp, his sweaty hands and dirty deals, and from him to Henry Drummond, the colonialist who had the cheek to call Zanzibar a “cesspool of wickedness.” They had become combined in my mind into a single, redfaced, upper-class Englishman.
I decided that Ron was not ready to hear more about my troubles with British law and simply replied, “No, I don’t think I’ll be going back.” Then I thought, and added, “How can you live here in Vermont and talk about England being gentle. Moore College is the most peaceful place I have ever been. And look at this restaurant, how patient and friendly the waiter is, how relaxed the people are.” The customers did look happy and harmless: pale skins, khaki pants, flannel shirts, sensible boots. “When was the last time there was a murder anywhere near Moore?”
“A murder?”
“Yes, we had murders in London. My butcher was killed. I worked in a restaurant where a customer was stabbed to death. We had bombs too. Even Dickens has murders.”
I recognised myself. I was Geoffrey in Zanzibar disillusioning a foreigner about her naive London dreams. It was an obscure revenge. I relented and asked, “Where did you stay?”
“A hotel on the Bayswater Road overlooking Hyde Park.”
“Its name?”
“The Coburg.”
My stomach clenched. One outing from my new house and I’m already back at The Coburg. At The Coburg seeing Benji for the last time.
Ron was watching me. “It doesn’t overlook Hyde Park,” I managed. “It overlooks Kensington Gardens. They join at Lancaster Gate. Where Baynard’s Water was. That’s how the area got its name—Bayswater.” There was a silence. He had not expected his quiet brown-skinned date to be so vehement, or pedantic. I closed my eyes to settle my stomach and cast around for something polite to offer a Professor of English. “You must have seen the old Whiteley’s store down the road then. Do you know it’s mentioned in Shaw’s Pygmalion? He tells Eliza Doolittle to get her dresses there.” I wanted to add, “I learned that in prison.”
“No, I didn’t know that. But I shopped there.” “Shopped there. Whiteley’s? But it’s closed.”
When I left Cookham Wood Prison I was escorted directly to the airport for deportation and had not seen Bayswater again. I had assumed that, like Zanzibar’s haunted House of Wonders, Whiteley’s would stay empty for ever.
“No, it’s open. It’s a mall. A bit more glamorous than most. Expensive. It has a beautiful circular staircase.” “Copied from La Scala, Milan.”
Ron leaned back in his chair, his eyes glinting behind his glasses with a terrifying admiration, “'you’re amazing, Marcella. You really know London. I’m so pleased they hired you.” Then he leaned forward and took my hand, but any chance he might have had with me on this date had gone since he had brought The Coburg into it, though I’d have difficulty explaining that to the host of Love Connection.
“Well, I wrote my doctoral thesis on Bayswater,” I explained, now adding, “During my prison period.”
I held his eye and this time Ron was too gendemanly an anglophile to press for more. He patted my hand and relinquished it, wondering perhaps about the frequency of murder in London.
IT TOOK A MONTH OF NO BENJI AND A MURDER TOturn me into a poodle, one of those pampered pets you see sitting pretty in the passenger seats of luxury cars with no clear purpose. It was my poodle spring, with so much future in front of it that only ignorance made it bearable. This spring, by contrast, is one for counting blessings. Let’s see. A salary. Nice people. Empty countryside. Peace. This house. A bit of respect. An admirer I can take or leave. The freedom to imprison myself. No ambition but to continue like this.
In Bayswater, after I pushed the idea of Benji into some small dense place behind the back of my mind, I set about finding my way without the secrets he apparently possessed for living life in London. I succeeded brilliantly, quickly managing to be the last human contact of a drug dealer, then transforming myself into a lapdog.
London was full up, overstuffed with people and activity. There were hundreds of ice-cream machines, thousands of taxis. Rents were enormous, "you could buy the entire city of Zanzibar for the price of a shop on Queensway. Several of the restaurants I noted on my first evening had already been replaced by new ones. I hated to think what had happened to the poor owners. Hundreds of people wanted every job and not only was I unqualified, I was illegal.
I tried to imagine myself into all sorts of professions. Could I be the girl in the Bureau de Change booth under the Coburg Hotel? But she was Chinese and I bet that her family owned the business. I wondered about the owner of a dress shop who seemed to be Iranian, and the assistants who worked under her. About estate agents, and the women being helped from Mercedes cars outside the Golden Horseshoe Casino, the West Indian girl bus conductor who fearlessly shouted out, “Any more fares!” and took no nonsense from the men. I asked Gabrielle about nursing and she told me not to even think about it: “Mrs Thatcher doesn’t like us. The National Health is being cut and the English girls get all the promotions. In any case, it’s years of training. I don’t think it’s right for you, Marcella,” she said, her hand holding mine. “You’re made for something different.” But she did not tell me what.
Kamara and Geoffrey tried to persuade me to apply for political refugee status which would, they explained, give me government benefits while my application was being processed, which could take years. I actually went to the office to get the forms. When I reached the door, I
