Displacement Stories of Identity and Belonging. Andrea Levy

When my grandma first came to England from the Caribbean she lived through days as lonely and cold as an open grave. The story she told her grandchildren was about the stranger who woke her while she was sleeping in a doorway and offered her a warm bed for the night. It was this act of benevolence that kept my grandmother alive. She was convinced of it. Her Good Samaritan.

      “Is something wrong?” the girl asked.

Now my grandmother talks with passion about scrounging refugees; those asylum seekers who can’t even speak the language, storming the country and making it difficult for her and everyone else.

“Last week…” she began, her voice quivering, “I was in home.”

      This was embarrassing. I couldn’t turn the other way, the girl was staring straight at me.

      “This day, Friday,” she went on, “I cooked fish for my mother and brother.”

      The whites of her eyes were becoming soft and pink; she was going to cry.

      “This day Friday I am here in London,” she said. “And I worry I will not see my mother again.”

      Only a savage would turn away when it was merely kindness that was needed.

I resolved to help her. I had warm bedrooms, one of them empty. I would make her dinner. Fried chicken or maybe poached fish in wine. I would run her a bath filled with bubbles. Wrap her in thick towels heated on a rail. I would hunt out some warm clothes and after I had put my son to bed I would make her cocoa. We would sit and talk. I would let her tell me all that she had been through. Wipe her tears and assure her that she was now safe. I would phone a colleague from school and ask him for advice. Then in the morning I would take Laylor to wherever she needed to go. And before we said goodbye I would press my phone number into her hand.

      All Laylor’s grandchildren would know my name.

      Her nose was running with snot. She pulled down the sleeve of her jacket to drag it across her face and said, “I must find my brother.”

      I didn’t have any more tissues. “I’ll get you something to wipe your nose,” I said. I got up from the table.

She watched me, frowning; the tiny hairs of her eyebrows locking together like Velcro.

      I walked to the counter where serviettes were lying in a neat pile. I picked up four. Then standing straight I walked on. Not back to Laylor but up the stairs to the exit.

I pushed through the revolving doors and threw myself into the cold.

aloof sweats from my pores I am a reserved and distanced person by nature

predicament difficult, trying situation

bleak cold, exposed, windswept

acid sour chemical substance

numb [nΛm] unable to feel anything (usu because of the cold)

whack (inf) hard hit

coppers (pl) coins of low value, made of bronze or copper (Kupfer)

cubicle small partitioned space, here: single, lockable toilet room

Darcey Bussell (b 1969) famous English ballerina

to gape to hang open

doodle casual scribble or sketch

rough [rΛf] book notebook used for sketches and random notes

to shrug to raise one’s shoulders to express indifference or uncertainty

glum downcast, depressed

fraternisation act of being friendly towards sb previously unknown

Alan Bennett (b 1934) English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter

Germaine Greer (b 1939) Australian writer and feminist

A.S. Byatt (b 1936) English novelist and poet

to jangle to make a low ringing sound

slot machine casino or amusement arcade gambling machine (usu with images of fruit)

to screw up one’s face (idm) to tighten the muscles of one’s face

reluctant feeling and showing hesitation and/or unwillingness

clumsy lacking skill and ease (ungeschickt)

detritus [dɪˈtraɪtəs] dirty, useless, loose material left over (here: dirt and crumbs already on the table)

curlicue [ˈkɜ:lɪkju:] (fml) spiral, curl

doggedly persistently