“Yes. You know me ... signing.” He made a face. “OK, Ken. Here? And here?”
Benji moved in a wardrobe’s worth of shirts and suits and a grey filing cabinet, then left me to my flat, departing on a mysterious overseas trip for several weeks. I knew that he was fleeing and also knew that his flights were elastic, his returns built into them. I bought furniture from Self ridges, being bold with the cost.
At this magical time, when I was not quite located in my new home but sensed that I would become so, I discovered that the double decker buses on their way to Marble Arch, Oxford Circus and Trafalgar Square passed so close that, when speeding, their upper decks rattled my windows in their frames, and if I had stretched out I might have brushed their sides with my fingers. In turn, the top deck passengers in their upright seats could see me, and I thought that if they paid attention they would see a smart London woman in a stylish flat, a cosmopolitan woman at the centre of things, with a gleaming dining table, a TV, a stack of silver stereo equipment, a couch upholstered in impractical white, a woman with modern pictures on the walls. I left the Venetian blinds open so that they could see. This, I decided, was even better than the Zanzibar dream of watching myself in the upstairs room of a London home; in this version I owned the home.
WITH EVERYONE GONE, I'M TRYING TO DO WITHOUTpeople. I’m not as good at this as I would wish. I can think of no reason why I should need people so absolutely, except that I have always had them. In prison there were cell-mates and the other prisoners, which was too much company. In London we were never short of visitors. In Africa it’s hard to be left alone. The daily contact with the Moore students has counted for more than I realised and now I regret that I kept my colleagues at a distance. In the Dean’s words, “We have learned to respect your privacy.” It’s too late now for me to ask for less respect.
My ancestors lived like this, waiting helpless for the seasons. They waited for the arrival of the westward Monsoon Drifts to move the boats between India and Zanzibar, then once aboard, they languished for a season while nature did its work. The westward winds from Asia took them and their goods up from Goa to Arabia, then down the African coast to Zanzibar. Return required waiting for the eastward Drifts, the work of winds from Africa. Nobody moved until the season was right. I’m waiting myself this summer, looking for patience, looking for a destination, hoping again for a letter. I’ve heard nothing from Adnam. My paper on migration is unfinished, becalmed, short of a conclusion.
I try hard to be fascinated by the birds and flowers and to feel a deep identity with nature that will leapfrog the lack of human belonging to something larger. I look at the ground and take photographs of leaves, sticks, even litter on the road. Vermont, America. This place. I don’t really want to love another place, any more than another person. I’m resisting it. I thought I would be in London forever. I gathered it around myself, a home I owned, a man I loved, friends to keep, nice things to buy. That was solidity, a shape for me in my new life. And all of it was lost. Now I sit lightly in a borrowed house, few attachments. I try to stay satisfied and grateful and not attract the attention of the world.
In London, instead of resisting attachment, I was unguarded and over the years place entered me. The Tube map was insinuated there along with nerves and circulation. I learned the texture of newly sandblasted yellow brick and the feel of granite kerbstones underfoot. From my living room I could distinguish the engine tones of the different types of London bus, those with open platforms and those without. I could make out a taxi’s diesel long before it came into sight. After I bought a car, I learned the best routes for driving from Bayswater to Docklands and from there to Camden Town, and where to park, and what to buy. I sussed out the bric-a-brac shops from Portabello to Kew where I might add to the collection of miniature ceramic pots from Asia cluttering my shelves and windowsills. In Bayswater I discovered shortcuts, hidden gardens, the Greek and Russian cathedrals, and could point out to clients the busts of famous English writers moulded into the upstairs of the building that housed the Arab bookshop in Westbourne Grove. I had learned to feed on winter gloom as well as summer sun. The programmes of the BBC, TVam and Thames Television were part of my personal clock. There was no national cuisine for which I was at a loss to recommend a restaurant. There was no clear line where London ended and I began. All this without deciding, or acquiring any sense at all that I was lost to place, or that place could be lost to me.
For three years after we heard the distant explosion and I bought my flat alone, London life carried me along. My business did well and Benji kept his word. He paid his share. I accommodated his mysteries and departures and came to trust the constancy and kindness of his love. His was the only body I wanted in my bed. I even told Gabrielle that I liked his absences, with their promise of reunions and the selfish enjoyment of my home. I fielded his phone calls, little birds flying in from the distant shores of his business life. If the calls became more numerous and the absences more frequent,
