Sulo gave a shrug. ‘Aunty, look at his ears. Millie Aunty is saying they are flapping in the wind. Also she says he has adenoids. What is adenoids, Aunty? Does it change the voice—will it sound different? What shall I do? Nasal tones you say, Aunty? Shall I write and ask for a cassette with his voice? If I don’t like it I can refuse, no?’

‘No, no,’ Meena went on, ‘he’s tall, handsome, fair also. Nice, good boy. We know the family. They can’t remember but they played together as children.’

‘But what to do about the voice, Aunty. They say he has adenoids. Then how to marry?’

Meena was silent, but there was a quiet gleam in her eye. This time Sulo would not have so easy a victory. The next time Menaka met them she asked, ‘So did you get the cassette with his voice?’

‘No, Aunty, I telephoned him. The voice sounds all right … but now there’s another proposal. Doctor from West Indies. That, of course, sounds better …’

The Golden Apples of the Hesperides

DOMINGOS WOULD say such crazy things. Just to attract attention and appear outrageous. He was the only person who filled any space in Marcia’s new life with so much sound, so much laughter; in that life which was yet to discover voices of familiarity and friendship. From that first silence which was empty and cavernous, sounds, echoes, began to reverberate. Domingos and Marcia were both in a new country. They had first to ask for directions to know which turning to take. There was kindness enough in this country where people already knew their way. ‘Come with me, lass, I will show you how to get there,’ any stranger would say and lead Marcia through the landscape of late summer, through George’s Square where the pigeons pecked at crumbs and those humans, whose names she would never know, sat eating crisps out of paper bags.

At the beginning of the journey it was only Domingos. His voice would boom and echo. He would laugh with so much gusto, yet there was a certain air of melancholy about him. His laughter was actually for himself. A reassurance, a sign that he was still alive in this grey and drizzly climate. It was now almost the end of the journey. Marcia shared a small, compact apartment in the University village with two Scottish girls, an English girl, a Malaysian and a Chinese, all students in the University. Domingos, after his many journeys, had at last come to live next door to Marcia and they were once more where they had begun from, yet each one changed, different. The world came in to meet them. Life had become easier after their manifold experiences.