“Marcella,” said a voice in my ear, “I’ve missed you.” It was recognisably Monique’s voice with its unruly strength, but her efforts to moderate its exuberance seemed to have cracked it and made it tremulous. I looked down at the hand on my arm: Monique’s long, lovely, fine-grained fingers, now freighted with expensive rings. The change was sufficiently disturbing that I turned away from Benji and the men to look at her. Her wild cape of hair was caught and tamed, and instead of one of her light dresses that seemed barely applied to her body and which spoke of Paris and the tropics in a single breath, she was encased in a couture suit with gold braiding and gold buttons. I took in her huge eyes and found an apologetic look there. “I’ve been ill,” she said. “They say it’s a post-natal something.” Her hand shook slightly.
By the time I could take my eyes from Monique, the men had gone. For the thesis I wrote in prison, where I reinvented order, I made Monique Case Study A, and counted her as a success. The light-skinned daughter of a Mauritian Creole family had escaped the limitations of her caste by migrating to Paris and then to London, where, newly polished and free of social restraints, she had traded her beauty on the international market and snagged a millionaire. I ended the story there, my heart hardened against sadness, and the knowledge of her ruin.
“No,” I said to Zareen as we settled into armchairs in her drawing room, “no children. We’re not married.”
I sat between these two lovely, wealthy wives, with half my mind on Benji and the different conversation in another room. A servant brought us tea and little cakes and Zareen questioned me about my business and about owning my own home, and whether Benji wanted to marry me. My answers led to thoughtful silences which I fancied was the sound of Zareen dreaming of my life for herself.
“I don’t think that Benji’s the settling-down type,” I said. “And I’m not sure I am either. What would I have that I don’t already have?”
“You’re so independent,” said Zareen. “I do admire your courage. You don’t miss children?”
“Oh, there are enough children as it is. No,” I corrected my glib and inconsiderate reply, “I love children. It just hasn’t happened. Wrong man, maybe. Of course,” I turned towards Monique who was being careful with her cup and saucer, “I never had Monique’s opportunities.” She looked back at me, trying to imagine who this Monique was who had had so many opportunities. I elaborated: “So many men chasing you. So many parties.” To Zareen I explained, “Even Benji was one of Monique’s first,” and then back to Monique, “Did I ever thank you?”
Monique thought, then said, “I did, didn’t I, go to a lot of parties?” Then she frowned like a small girl confronting an insoluble arithmetic problem.
“Monique,” I said, “you’ve only been married eighteen months. "You can still go to parties.”
“No,” she replied simply, as if to everything.
I waited until bedtime, and Ashraf’s departure to his room, to ask how the meeting went.
“Well. It went well. Ashraf knows everyone in Pakistan.”
“Are we doing business with Pakistan?”
“I am. Among other places.”
“Benji, what are you cooking up?”
“I can’t tell you. Not yet.”
“What do you mean you can’t? I was supposed to be there. What about all that money in my account?”
“That was Adnam’s. It’s gone now. I just don’t want to tell you yet, Marcella. It may not happen. I’m sorry. It’s much better you don’t know for now. For your sake. Trust me.”
I hesitated, on the edge of anger, then thought I must. I put my hands to his throat, but only kissed him. “Singapore man. All this mystery. You’ve always been in love with mystery. Give me a clue at least. Not mercenaries to Fiji. Or Idi Amin?”
“No, no small stuff like that. It’s a commodity deal. Buying one place, selling another. That’s all. But it’s just better to be discreet. For now.” He paused, removed my hands from his neck and held my shoulders with his own. “This time it’s different. This time I’m in the right place. It’s right.”
“OK, it’s right. But don’t expect me to deal with the telephone calls. Just bring yourself to bed.”
“I’ll join you in a minute. I have to have a word with Ashraf.”
News from England barely reached us in Bayswater. I caught sight of items on the TV news and skimmed them in the paper but they were stories from a foreign place. Since I first arrived, I had not left London. Among my friends and neighbours, the English were less well represented than Arabs, Indians and half-a-dozen other varieties. I had not even visited outer London. My world was central London with a thin extension arm west down the M4 to Heathrow Airport, from which members of my world departed and arrived. Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi were closer and more important than Yorkshire and Wales. The news from England was baffled and muffled by our noisy Babylon before it reached my ears.
As far as I could tell England at that time was all riots and police. Striking coal miners were shown fighting with police in various remote places. The police were battling people in the cities too, mostly black people, West Indians—Afro-Caribbeans, according to Kamara’s correction of the news reader—protesting earlier actions by the police. Even in London there were riots, but not in my part of London. The pictures on the TV were of police with shields and truncheons, houses on fire, men with blood coming from their heads, and Mrs Thatcher explaining it all very carefully and very slowly. We turned the sound off when Mrs Thatcher came on. We were the sort of free market entrepreneurs she said that England needed, but none of us liked her. It was clear that we were
