Of my friends, I made case studies A to M. Monique was A, Gabrielle B, Kamara C. I cannot quite remember who I used for M, someone I knew less well and who required a greater dose of imagination for their three-page profile. It felt like betrayal, but by then I was girded for betrayal. It was a cold thing, my thesis. And I did not tell the exact truth, so that my betrayals were nicely balanced: I shopped my friends, but I also lied to the English academics who wanted their lives so much.
The truth was that Hereford Road was a warm embrace. On an evening some time after the end of our restaurant venture, we were sitting around as usual, nibbling at cakes from LEtoile Patisserie, drinking wine. Outside it was still light—long after the proper time for darkness, just as during my Reading winter the darkness had arrived too early and stayed too late. The one certainty offered by Zanzibar had been a consistent length of night. We were subdued. Kamara was there and so was his friend Yvonne, the white South African revolutionary whom I had first met at Geoffrey’s pub in Reading. They had just put Tayeb, a young Gambian visitor, on a plane back home. He had come to London for medical treatment, but in the time we knew him had just got thinner without finding any help from London doctors. We thought he would probably die and the mood was subdued. Adnam was in his usual seat.
“The poor thing!” said Monique. “Couldn’t we do anything to help him, Gaby?”
“They couldn’t find out what is wrong with him. He is very sick. Just wasting. They tried some treatments, but nothing.”
“If he was English, they would have kept trying, I’m sure,” said Kamara. “African illnesses are neglected by Western medicine.”
“No, Kamara, it wasn’t a plot. I called my friend at the hospital. They tested him for everything. Not everyone can be cured.” Gabrielle was almost impatient, tired after her nursing shift. “It’s better he goes home and is among his family.”
“African traditional medicine might be more helpful,” offered Yvonne. “Traditional healers know things that Western doctors don’t. Witch doctors, you know.” Yvonne never noticed how much more strident her voice was than ours.
“I hope so,” said Gabrielle.
Monique was looking towards Adnam as if he might have a solution to this as he did for everything else, but Adnam was silent on the subject of death.
I used Tayeb too, a case study somewhere between G and L. They discovered AIDS in between the time he left and the time I wrote my thesis, so I gave him that. I made a delicate analysis of medical migration, how the hope for a cure is balanced against its cost and the comfort of home. I think I even brought the desire for life itself into it, and the trade-off against its quality.
Cutting short this talk of death and medicine, Adnam asked, “Do you think you’ll ever go back to Sierra Leone, Kamara?”
“Not now. The government will kill me. I can’t imagine when it will be safe for me.”
“They still have some diamonds there, don’t they?”
“There are still diamonds, but the Syrians take them all. They give some to the politicians to keep them quiet.”
Adnam nodded, weighing a further question, then deciding it was not the time, turning to Yvonne instead.
“Of course, it’s nothing like the diamond industry in South Africa.”
“My father was in the diamond business. It’s built on horrible exploitation of the black population.”
“Of course. Horrible. I’d like to talk to you about it one day.”
“You’re interested in diamonds?” asked Benji quietly, of Adnam.
“I am,” said Monique.
“Actually,” said Kamara, ignoring the new current, “I’m a property owner now, so I can’t call myself a visitor to England any more.”
“What?” said Yvonne.
“I’m a property owner. I own a house.”
“I don’t believe you. How can you? You’re a socialist. Anyway, you don’t have any money.” She half smiled as insurance, in case she had missed a joke. Yvonne often missed jokes.
Kamara laughed. “You should believe me. I have a house. A big one, actually. Four floors. Not too far from Bayswater. More Queens Park.”
“How can you? You can’t afford a house. And you don’t believe in private property. That’s why you tried to make your coup, remember?”
“It’s corrupt, actually.” Kamara looked happy, animated, as if delighted to confound Yvonne’s good opinion of him. There was something cruel in it. “Thatcher is making us sell off our council houses. Privatisation, you know. Smaller government. Doctrinaire capitalism. She wants to make all our voters into little Conservative property owners. So my housing department wanted to sell me one. Very cheap. With a loan of course. If housing has to be private, it’s better that it’s owned by socialists, isn’t it?” He laughed. “The Conservatives started it. Westminster council only sells to its Conservative friends. Very corrupt, actually. I’m surprised at how corrupt England is. They didn’t teach us that in the British Constitution classes at school.”
“You pig!” said Yvonne.
Adnam, comfortable in the armchair, slumming it here, his shoes off, smiled indulgently. Gabrielle in her dressing gown had pulled her knees up underneath her chin and closed her eyes. Monique started to push herself up from the arm of Adnam’s chair to fetch some wine and Benji motioned for her to stay put while he got it. Yvonne
