While I noticed this new restraint in me, Julia was oblivious. “It was incredible,” she said. “You were right. I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
She told me how different it had looked from anything she had ever seen, and how different the customs were from anything she had ever known, how the hardship of the poor was unimaginable, yet the grace of their culture was undefeated. Nothing before, she said, had prepared her for the sight of ships in full sail passing through rice fields of luminous green, or a million brightly dressed Hindu pilgrims wading into the water, or the crowded swirl of the Dacca streets, the gaudy rickshaws with their emaciated drivers, the trouble taken in the market to make multi-coloured sculptures from spice powders.
I listened, prompted, made tea for us, while she struggled to abandon the surface and find a lesson that might please me. “It made me realise,” she said, “how arbitrary our view of things is. How you can see everything from one place and understand it one way, and not realise that for other people in another place the same world looks entirely different. America was a fantasy place for poor Bangladeshis, powerful, cruel, invisible, a paradise for those who lived there. The girl who translated for me wanted me to take her with me. She really believed that everything would be perfect for her if she could just go to America. She had no idea of how difficult it would be for her.”
It did not seem to occur to Julia that I might feel closer to that girl than to her, or that this cool assessment of foreign things might be an irritation. The course of summer had taken me from cool to hot and she could not have known that either. I shifted, asked her if she had met anyone special, certain that she had. Well, there had been this Australian volunteer, Paul. They had been working together at Bangladesh Rescue so intimately that it had soon been easy and natural to share a bed. From the smile she could not hide, I could tell that Paul had been a success in that bed.
“What about you?” she now asked. “Did you find your old partner? Or someone new?”
“Nobody new. I don’t know about my old partner. I have some leads.”
It was unthinkable now, listening to Julia’s outsider tales, to confide in her about the newspaper clipping, and the urgency of the way the past was consuming me. How could she understand? Why couldn’t she have fallen passionately for a Bangladeshi while she was there, instead of an Australian do-gooder? She could have embroiled herself in difficult, dangerous situations that would have made individual Bangladeshis seem large and frightening, or large and powerful. She might have been rattled, touched, bloodied, cursed, been herself in need of rescue.
All this came out only as “So, no Bangladeshi men, then?”
“Oh, no. We were warned about that. It leads to trouble. It would have been unprofessional. We’re so much richer than they are.”
I hugged Julia on the way out too. I knew my irritation was not fair. She’d gone from girl to woman in her summer. I’d gone from the present to the past. She said, on the doorstep, “I’m so grateful that you made me go. Nothing will ever be the same for me again.”
In Westbourne Grove, the doorbell rang. “Gaby! What a nice surprise. I haven’t seen you for so long.”
Instead of an embrace, she walked straight past, flopped onto my couch, and pulled off and threw down her nurse’s cap in a single movement. “Gabrielle, what’s the matter?” She was never like this, never rude or discomposed.
“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.”
“There is! What is it? Tell me. Do you want some tea?” “Tea? No, I don’t think so. What is it that rich people have around this time? Cocktails? Gin and tonic, isn’t it?”
“Gaby, I’ve never seen you like this. Have I done something?” I flashed through things I might have done or left undone: visits not made, a birthday forgotten, an accidental insult.
“No, you haven’t done anything. I need you to do something. You’re a property developer, aren’t you? Along with Kamara and Adnam and everyone else. Everyone with their fingers in the pudding. You must know all the other property developers and their friends in the Westminster Conservative party.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense. I hate the Conservatives. They ruined Porchester Baths.”
“You and your precious Porchester Baths. Do you think that’s important? Three years ago you didn’t have a penny and now you’re upset because they redecorated your favourite sauna. Marcella, where is your head? How do you think you made your money? Only because the Conservatives were selling off poor people’s council houses. Kamara’s the same. Worse—he calls himself a socialist.”
“And what is it you want this rich, corrupt person to do for you?”
“Go to your friends and tell them to leave my hospital alone.”
“What?”
“They’re selling St Mary’s to their property developer friends. They’re knocking it down to build luxury flats for yuppies. I’ve worked there for six years. All the old people around Harrow Road know us. They depend on us. Often they were born there. Have you any idea how hard I’ve worked to keep giving people proper care in spite of the cuts? This was the only thing that made it all worthwhile to come halfway across the world and work my fingers to the bone. That the old people of Harrow Road appreciate me. They’re grateful. Ordinary, poor people. Black and white, it doesn’t matter. They send me Christmas cards with pictures of their grandchildren. It makes up for Thatcher and her racist friends not liking us. And for the wages. I can’t even afford
