The telephone ring and when I pick it up it is Mui. She say she ready to come home.
‘Mui, yu know that is what everybody want. That is what yu been working so hard for all these years, but honestly this is not a good moment.’
‘Papa, it’s Jamaica. Is there ever going to be a good moment?’
‘Maybe not, but there will be a better moment than this one. Trust me on that. Anyway, has something happened? Yu nuh sound so good. Yu sound like maybe yu just done crying.’ She quiet at the other end of the phone. ‘Something happen then?’
‘I met a woman at one of the dinners. She is a head of chambers at Lincoln’s Inn.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I happened to mention that I am Jamaican and she remarked that she had been to Jamaica many years ago. Anyway, she seemed quite friendly. She asked me my name, which it seemed like she already knew. And then she asked me who my father was, and when I told her she completely changed towards me. She became very dismissive, almost hostile. It was such a sudden transformation I started to wonder if I was imagining it, and then afterwards I thought perhaps she had some kind of personality problem because someone told me that she actually asked to be seated next to me.’
‘What this woman called?’
‘Her name is Helena Meacham. If you know her it may be under a different name. I know she has been married and divorced and I’m not sure if Meacham is her married name.’
‘No, that is her name from when she was down here. But so what? What so important ’bout this that it make you cry?’
‘Well, since I met her some horrible things have been happening around me. First of all I seem to be getting less work from the chambers’ clerk. Less work, less well paid, less interesting. Second, people who used to be quite friendly have stopped speaking to me, and a few have been quite rude or nasty. I am beginning to feel completely ostracised.’
I think to myself ‘ostracised’, what kinda word is this? But then I know Mui smart enough to make her way in England so now she got all sorta English word and she even sound like she English as well.
‘Yu nuh think maybe yu taking it all too serious?’
‘No, Papa, it’s really horrible.’
‘And yu think this Helena saying things to people to make them start treat yu this way?’
‘I can’t say for sure. I haven’t even seen her again since the dinner, but it does seem uncanny in its timing.’
Uncanny? I think she completely outta my league now.
‘But how do you know her anyway?’
‘I help her and her father fix a couple problems they had down here.’
‘Then surely she should be pleased to have met me.’
‘It wasn’t ’ and then I run outta words but it no matter. Mui cut straight ’cross me.
‘This thing with her happened a few months ago and my life has been unbearable since then. I don’t see how I can carry on like this so I thought the best thing to do is just to come home. That is what I have been wanting to do all along anyway.’
‘Mui, yu not that long qualified. Don’t yu think yu should stay there a while and get yourself some experience?’
‘You don’t understand, Papa. I hate what I am doing. I hate having to get up every day and go to work to face people who have become so cold towards me, who can barely bring themselves to look at me, who walk out of rooms when I enter them. It takes the pleasure out of everything. Everything. At least if I come home I can feel that I am doing some good.’
‘Calm yourself down. Yu getting yourself all irate over some stupid woman. What yu mother say about it anyway?’
‘I haven’t said anything to her about it.’
‘Yu nuh tell your mother ’bout it? Mui, yu got to talk to her. She right there with yu. Not like me four thousand mile away on a telephone. Anyway, how can people change just like that? They nuh know yu long before all of this happen? How can one woman make them turn like that?’
‘Power, Papa. She has it and I don’t. Besides, like you always used to say, white people stick together and that is as true in England as it is in Jamaica.’
I think to myself Mui need to simmer down and take it steady. Everything got its edge. You just have to find it. Sun Tzu say, ‘ The general must rely on his ability to control the situation to his advantage as opportunity dictates .’