The child was probably thinking, But ships and cranes and water was Cape Town, and now it’s called London. As for me, real London was still ahead, like the beginning of my real life, which would have happened years before if the war hadn’t stopped me coming to London. A clean slate, a new page—everything still to come. I was full of confidence and optimism, though my assets were minimal: rather less than £150; the manuscript of my first novel, The Grass Is Singing, already bought by a Johannesburg publisher who had not concealed the fact he would take a long time publishing it, because it was so subversive; and a few short stories. I had a couple of trunkfuls of books, for I would not be parted from them, some clothes, some negligible jewellery. I had refused the pitiful sums of money my mother had offered, because she had so little herself, and besides, the whole sum and essence of this journey was that it was away from her, from the family, and from that dreadful provincial country Southern Rhodesia, where, if there was a serious conversation, then it was—always—about The Colour Bar and the inadequacies of the blacks.
