Born here, parents born here, always lived here – still, never from here. Their culture becomes parody on my body.
?
Sitting here, I feel cramped and prickly. My handbag is stowed above. Coat folded over on my lap. I’m hot and my skin is crawling. I want to be off this train, back in my flat, peeling off these scratching clothes and sliding between cool cotton sheets.
I just want to rest. Stop. Just for a minute.
This kind of thinking leads to undoing. Or else, not doing, which is the slower, more painful approach to coming undone. So much still to do. Yet so much, done, already.
I’m still here, aren’t I? Soon, it might be over. Maybe I can stop caring. Stop trying – no, I mustn’t be rash, can’t close doors just yet. It could take years. Luck. It’s just opportunity and preparation.
?
My exam prep was meticulous. It was everything. Morning to night, every hour accounted for in my self-devised schedule. I had an absolute dedication, back then, that I’ve never since recaptured. No distractions, no lost focus. No idle thoughts. It was a meditation. And after months of that devoted study, I walked once more from the station to the school, across the busy junction. I was ready.
And I saw all: forty years stretching indefinitely, racing along a cobbled and sparkling road. Boats and champagne, flights, panoramic views, the board room, flashing trading screens; flickering lights, the corner office, the dark corner of the members’ club; green, sprawling grounds. Clouds streaming like wet-stretched cotton; wool, strung across the sky. A sky blue, and cold. Swish, the windscreen wiper wipes across dry glass and –
A lady is shaking my arm and scream-shouting WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? There’s a car, at a wrong angle, spanning two lanes, others honking and pedestrians stopping to look. It’s all stopped – temporarily, the lady has pulled me back on to the island. Shaking me, still.
I aced the exams.
Premonition or plan? Doesn’t matter, I keep chasing.
?
I’m greedy for a hundred years from now.
?
This is the boom
and this is the climb, you’ve twinned it, followed it up. Not euphoric, as you’d imagined. But perhaps it never is, when you’re in the thing. It can’t
last, though, you know. And so, you put it away, you save. It rains every day in England! Here you are, with your accounts and now your accountant, and you put things into bonds, into funds; you pound cost average. And you brace yourself for it. Hold cash in accounts, in a wallet, in a box beneath the bed. Gold – you start to consider. Seriously, something is always coming. Words embossed – into brass, into aluminium, you watch videos of men, pouring fire into buckets; the charred, white-hot remains. Money is just belief, reality is perception, so why not? Stow some there, some everywhere. Be careful, though, and save
you see others – Rach, Lou, they spend. They enjoy it. But is their current lifestyle peak truly a new floor? You don’t know. But you can weather an emergency, stress-test yourself, you will not be undone by a small thing. You hope. There’s only hope. Hope it’s enough to weather any bust until the swing back around when you can grab hold, pull up and start the climb again.
?
The small envelope is government-brown in a pile of white. I open it and find my unsmiling face twice amongst the pages. Name, date of birth, citizenship. I am appalled at my relief and at this sort of relief – thin and substantive only as the paper it’s printed on. We’ve seen now, just as then, the readiness of this government and its enterprising Home Secretary to destroy paper, our records and proof. What is citizenship when you’ve watched screaming Go Home vans crawl your street? When you’ve heard of the banging, unexpected, always, at the door? When British, reduced to paper, is swept aside and trodden over? The passport cover feels smooth and new in my hands. Slip it, away. Into the folder at the back of the bottom dresser drawer.
?
Rach sorts efficiently. Pack, storage, charity. The pile on the bed beside me, pack, is the largest. Her dresses, knitwear, blouses. Soft fabrics rustle as she places each item down. I breathe the musky-citrus scent. She’s already set aside the complementary tools: dedicated brushes, combs, shampoos, sprays. All sorts. Her clothes have complex care requirements, detailed on sewn-in tags.
Moving in together – it might even be good for her career, she says. Her voice is muffled and questioning from within the walk-in wardrobe. More networking opportunities?
She emerges with three dresses – bright, floral, patterned numbers – draped across her arms like limp brides. She sighs and sets them down next to me. Chiffon rolls, delicate and tidal, in the breeze from her open window.