But I did. In the absence of capital and a brilliant idea, I finally offered myself to the Kentucky Fried Chicken take-away in a poorer neighbourhood. On my first shift a West Indian customer, who had just insisted on shaking my hand, was stabbed in the chest on our doorstep. I had to push the dead man’s heels off the step with my toe before I could lock the door. The Hot and Spicy I had sold him was spilled down his shirt, so the blood looked like gravy. He had shaken my hand and invited me to a party. I had not liked him, his arrogance. “Drug dealer,” the pasty-faced manager had said contemptuously.
Still wearing my Kentucky Fried uniform, I fled back to Hereford Road before the police could question me, all Geoffrey’s unwelcome talk about nasty, dangerous London swirling in my head, flushing out the optimism.
That evening I sat in my dressing gown, shocked and demoralised, my chin on my knees, trying not to meet the sympathetic looks on Monique’s and Adnam’s faces.
“Adnam’s had an idea,” said Monique, brightly. “A spontaneous idea.” Spontaneous was Monique’s favourite compliment.
“Yes, but it’s nothing much, you know. You’re Indian, aren’t you, Marcella? From Zanzibar.”
“Goan.”
“Perfect.”
“I’m half Arab,” I surprised myself by adding.
“You speak Arabic?”
“No. A few words.”
“Well, that’s fine. Well, what I propose is that you help me with my work. I have a business associate, Ismael. The poor fellow is driving around all day visiting people, having meetings. He needs some help. Could you? It will not be a lot of money, but better than Kentucky Fried Chicken. He’s a nice fellow.”
“Say yes,” instructed Monique from behind him, nodding her head vigorously. “You’ll learn all about London business.”
“Yes,” I said. “Anything. If you think I could do it. I’m sorry, Adnam, I don’t even know what sort of business you are in.”
“International trade mainly. But it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry. 'You’ll pick it up.”
“What,” I asked Monique the next day, “should I wear?” “Something colourful, sexy. Those poor men in suits and their boring business deals. But not too sexy. We don’t want to inflame them, do we, rouse their passions?”
“Monique, I don’t have any sexy clothes. Only jeans.” “Definitely no jeans. A dress.”
“Dresses don’t look good on me. I’ve got skinny legs. Only very long or very short dresses look good.”
“Definitely the short. Let’s look in Gaby’s wardrobe. She’s your size.”
“But Arab men don’t like women in short dresses.” “Marcella, cherie, are you crazy? Where have you been all your life?”
“Zanzibar.”
Ismael—from Syria via Lebanon and France as far as I could tell—picked me up the next morning. I wore a coat over the red dress with its spaghetti straps and low back. “I can’t wear a bra with this,” I’d said to Monique. But she had assured me it was OK, that the dress was French and the French knew how to be sexy and modest at the same time. “And you have nice little breasts, not these big nuisances,” she added, spreading her perfect hands across her perfect chest.
Ismael took my coat immediately and I felt Monique had given me bad advice for a cold London morning. “The car is warm,” he said. “You’ll see.” I watched his face light up. “Beautiful.” He opened the door of the big BMW. “Please.”
We drove along Westbourne Grove and then past Paddington station. Ismael put in a tape, smiled but did not talk. What, I wondered, was happening? I was wearing someone else’s clothes, driving with a stranger to an unknown destination for a purpose I did not understand. We had not discussed money. I’d given up all control for this cocoon of a leather seat in a warm car. I looked at Ismael and realised he was young and very handsome, almost pretty. His grey suit shimmered, and seemed as immune to creases as a baby’s skin. Like Adnam’s, his hair was immaculate, the subject of microscopic attentions. His nails were better manicured than mine. He was so polished and perfect that I could not imagine any way of being with him.
“Where are we going?” I asked, conscious of the smallness of my voice.
He turned down the music. “Sorry, Marcella?”
“I wondered where we are going.”
“Oh, the bank. Then we have a lunch meeting.” He turned the music back up.
“And what do I have to do?”
Patiently, he again turned down the volume and I repeated my question.
“Do? Oh, nothing to worry about, Marcella. Just being there is enough.”
We worked our way through Edgeware Road’s heavy traffic. Just short of Marble Arch, where the road converged with Oxford Street and Park Lane and the press of vehicles was at its greatest, Ismael stopped the car and switched on its flashers, blocking one lane of the road.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he anounced, sending me into a panic. “Play the tapes. If anyone asks you anything, just say you don’t speak English.”
Before I could form a reply, he had closed the door and was hurrying across the pavement, miming helplessness and apology to the traffic stuck behind us.
Left alone, I found I was the focus of a hundred hating eyes. Whole busloads of hostility slid past my window at a snail’s pace. They saw that their appointments were being missed because of the selfishness of an expensive black car containing a foreign woman wearing a backless red minidress at ten in the morning, and they hated me. In a day I had gone from being the fast-food servant of a low-life murder victim to a symbol of resented wealth and privilege. I locked the doors, turned up the music and wished I’d brought a magazine. To avoid looking at the
