has spent much time in the British colonies. He says that in the old days people gave their slaves Greek and Roman names as a joke, and his ancestor was landed with the name of Cato. He is off now to work with Che in South America, where there is so much to do, and one day perhaps he will be able to go back to Jamaica to do some work there. That's where his heart is. He should be an example to you.
In the square black-and-white photograph, which was not well focused, Percy was sitting on a half-wall, legs dangling, in the slanting light of morning or late afternoon. He was wearing a striped woollen cap and a whitish tunic or bush shirt with a raised embroidered design in the same whitish colour. So he was as stylish as ever. He was smiling at the camera, and in his bright eyes Willie thought he could see all the other Percies: the Percies of Jamaica and Panama, Notting Hill and the bohemian parties, and the college of education.
What are your plans? We get very little news of England here, just a little item from time to time about the race riots. Was your book published? You kept it to yourself. You didn't send us a copy, and I suppose it's come and gone. Well, now that you've got it out of your system, it's time for you to put that kind of vanity aside, and think more constructively about the future.
Willie thought, “She's right. I've been believing in magic. My time's nearly finished here. My scholarship is nearly at an end, and I have planned nothing at all. I've been living here in a fool's paradise. When my time is up and they throw me out of the college, my life is going to change completely. I will have to look for a place to stay. I will have to look for a job. It will be a different London then. Ana wouldn't want to come to a room in Notting Hill. I am going to lose her.”
He worried like this for some days and then he thought, “I've been a fool. I've been waiting to be guided to where I should go. Waiting for a sign. And all this time the sign's been there. I must go with Ana to her country.”
When they next met he said, “Ana, I would like to go with you to Africa.”
“For a holiday?”
“For good.”
She said nothing. A week or so later he said, “You remember what I said about going to Africa?” Her face clouded. He said, “You've read my stories. You know I've nowhere else to go. And I don't want to lose you.” She looked confused. He didn't say any more. Later, when she was leaving, she said, “You must give me time. I have to think.” When she next came to his room, and they were on the little sofa, she said, “Do you think you'll like Africa?”
He said, “You think there'll be something I'll be able to do there?”
“Let's see how you like the bush. We need a man on the estate. But you'll have to learn the language.”
In his last week at the college a letter came from Sarojini in Colombia.
I am glad you've at last got the diploma, though I don't know what you will do with it where you are going. Serious work has to be done in Africa, especially in those Portuguese places, but I don't think it will be done by you. You are like your father, holding on to old ideas till the end. About other matters, I hope you know what you are doing, Willie. I don't understand what you write about the girl. Outsiders who go to India have no idea of the country even when they are there, and I am sure the same is true of Africa. Please be careful. You are putting yourself in the hands of strangers. You think you know what you are going to, but you don't know all of it.
Willie thought, “She likes her own international marriage, but she is worried about mine.”
But, as always, her words, glib though they were, the words of someone still mimicking adulthood, troubled him and stayed with him. He heard them as he did his packing, removing his presence bit by bit from the college room, undoing the centre of his London life. Undoing that, so easily now, he wondered how he would ever set about getting a