Sunday afternoons had a tendency to drag for both of them. Julius would often finish folding the pile of clothes and then slump down onto the settee and watch as Monica continued to iron the shirts and skirts that needed special attention. Playing the part of a husband was something that he had taken on in order to make Monica feel more secure, but after only a few months in this role he was already unsure if he truly possessed the stamina, or the desire, to continue with the drama. He had no idea what the secretive and inscrutable Monica did with her time while he was on campus and no clear understanding if she possessed any goals in life, either short or long term, for she appeared to be reluctant to speak of herself. Once again Monica asked him to get up from the settee. Julius accepted a large paper bag full of rubbish, while Monica grabbed a fistful of empty milk bottles, and together they tramped their way down the stairs. As they descended, Julius realized that even though he had no idea of what lay ahead for them both, he should perhaps at least try and talk to his wife about his uneasy feelings. He pitched the rubbish bag into the dustbin and replaced the lid with an earsplitting clatter. Monica shot him a disdainful look. “Sorry.” He paused. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” When they returned upstairs, Julius poured a small finger of whisky and began to pace the room, while Monica carefully draped one freshly ironed shirt after another over wire hangers and hung them, one by one, in the small cupboard by the front door that served as their wardrobe. He could feel Monica watching him out of the corner of her eye, but as usual, neither of them said anything, and so once again he reached for the whisky bottle and took up a seat on the settee.
* * *
Julius wrote to a young law student at Cambridge, a fellow countryman who was the latest recipient of the same island overseas scholarship that he had been awarded. He asked the young man if it was true that Lloyd Samuels, his former high school classmate, had formed an opposition party. The young man replied and confirmed that shortly before his own departure for England, the newly qualified Dr. Samuels had returned from his studies in Canada and opened a general practice in the poorest part of the capital. Apparently he had also formed the People’s Action Party, among whose earliest recruits was the would-be lawyer, who was thoughtful enough to enclose the details of both Lloyd Samuels’s place of business and his private residence.
Dr. Samuels was pleased to hear from Julius, and his first letter was notable for an excess of excitement, which reminded Julius of his friend’s laughable attempts to make his stuttering, overly verbose points during classroom discussions. On more than one occasion, he remembered looking across at Lloyd and wondering just what would become of the jovial, plump boy who held his pencil like a spike, and who by the time he donned long trousers was astute enough to have given up any ambitions of the island scholarship. Young Lloyd’s accent was already beginning to be seasoned with a slight American affectation, which suggested the direction in which his mind was starting to drift, but a medical school in a provincial Canadian university, as opposed to an East Coast Ivy League establishment, was probably the right level for his friend. Dr. Samuels’s second letter encouraged Julius to meet with the chief party organizer in London, but after a day-long excursion to the capital, during which Julius spent much of a frustrating afternoon and early evening sitting in a noisy London Transport depot tea room, waiting for this busy bus driver to discover time between shifts to discuss the matter of their country’s road to independence, he wrote to Lloyd and wished him well with his political endeavours. A week later, Julius received the telegram suggesting that he leave the south coast of England, move to London, and take over as chief party organizer in Britain, with a salary that would be drawn from whatever subscriptions he could raise and supplemented by sales of a projected monthly newspaper to be called The People’s Voice, although Lloyd made it clear that Julius was free, within reason, to use whatever title he wished.
* * *
“Eventually I’ll have to give some talks and go out on the road, but not now, not during summer, for people are either away or just relaxing.”
His wife was standing by the window and staring across the street at a café outside of which a few small metal tables, surrounded by a random assortment of chairs, were arranged on the pavement in a manner that blocked the flow of pedestrian traffic. It was Monica who had organized their move to London and found this single bed-sitting-room in Ladbroke Grove, a down-at-heel but affordable location whose chief virtue was its proximity to the tube station. Travelling up to London by train and scanning cards in newsagents’ windows had finally given her something to do, for although she had not let on to Julius, she was not sure how much more she could have endured of her aimless existence on the south coast. Once she had set up their flat and explored every nook and cranny of the drab seaside town, she had quickly come face-to-face with the dispiriting reality that beyond Julius, she had no community.
“Right now I have to identify nationals working or studying here so that when the time comes, we have a caucus of votes to draw upon.”
“But you’re not independent yet.”
She said this without turning from the window to face him, and although he wanted to admonish her, he said nothing.
“When the cross-party delegation arrives in London, I figure I’ll accompany them to Whitehall for the independence discussions. But all of this is in the future. Right now we need to know who we can count on for what comes afterwards.”
He watched as Monica crossed the room to the bulky electricity meter by the door, pushed in sixpence, and then turned the key. They both heard the rattle of the coin as it dropped into the metal box, and then the lights flickered to life, but Monica turned them off and took up a seat at the crowded kitchen table and pushed the newspaper out of the way. The early-evening sunset was illuminating the small room, but she knew that this was just a momentary prelude to the gloom that would follow. While her husband was talking, it had finally become clear to Monica that the real problem with the room was that it had been painted an ill-chosen mauve. To further compound the issue, there was nothing on the walls, no pictures, not even an old calendar or a mirror, so tomorrow she would begin the now familiar project of going out to the shops and street markets to see what she might find to liven up the place. Secondhand prints, cheap posters, anything would do, so long as they could be tacked up on the horribly coloured wall and would stay up, then at least they would have something uplifting to look at. Down on the street she could hear the noisy scraping of the tables and chairs being dragged back into the café as the owner prepared to lock up for the night. It was so oppressively hot, and she had already learned that if she kept the single window open, there was noise and soot to contend with, but if she closed in the window the room would soon become stifling. Either way, she couldn’t win.
* * *
On the first Saturday morning of each month, Julius travelled by tube and then bus to an unsightly part of South London. Moving to the city had made this ghastly journey far easier in practical terms, but for some time now the ordeal of fulfilling his parental obligation to the child from his first marriage had been taxing his dwindling reserves of goodwill and optimism. The eight-year-old girl had been born shortly after he’d arrived in England and made her first appearance during a blizzard-ravaged winter that people seemed keen to continually inform him was “unusual.” The girl was slow, and he feared she might have been affected by English weather, but whenever he raised these concerns with the girl’s mother, she looked angrily at him, which served only to stoke his resentment towards the woman. Until the girl was three, he commuted to university from their South London council flat, but when he finally packed his bags and resolved to leave London and scout for his own place in Oxford, a part of him wanted to miss his daughter. Five years later, however, he still feels uneasy that he has never, not once, been touched by any sense of guilt or loss.