David's Story

in order to set forth the grotesque feminine disfigurement which the freaks of fashion made popular in the middle eighties.

She packs his bag and oh, if only she could pack her broken heart, pressed and flattened for David to find bleeding in the folds of his best shirt. But she says carelessly, I’ve packed your good shirt for going out.

To call so many stages of transformation by the single name of laundering is to take the difference out of washing and ironing—and how else do you get through your days, your life, without dwelling on such differences, without probing their meanings.

Nothing like a cup of tea, he thinks, to soothe the troubled mind and wash down half-baked ideas. They have long ago given up smoking but on such occasions they both savour the memory of a cigarette, of blowing smoke through the nostrils, by way of calming the nerves.

Liberate yourself and face up to being a Tupperware boy, light, multipurpose, adaptable. We’re brand new Tupperware people and should thank God for that.

If freedom is about looking awful then I leave it to your revolutionaries like Comrade Dulcie.

Ugh, Sally snorts, the things that pass for freedom these days.

Like picnics—only when you’re sure of a good roof over your head would you even think of eating out of doors, of making a song and dance about eating under a tree. Same thing, dressing up in leopard skin and feathers and baring your tits for the nation

faintly familiar deep voice (Dulcie’s voice?) she mocks,

it’s the African roots that count. What do you expect to find? Ours are all mixed up and tangled; no chance of us being uprooted, because they’re all in a neglected knot, stuck.