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wrote to a young law student at Cambridge, a fellow countryman who was the latest recipient of the same island overseas scholarship that he had been awarded. He asked the young man if it was true that Lloyd Samuels, his former high school classmate, had formed an opposition party. The young man replied and confirmed that shortly before his own departure for England, the newly qualified Dr. Samuels had returned from his studies in Canada and opened a general practice in the poorest part of the capital. Apparently he had also formed the People’s Action Party, among whose earliest recruits was the would-be lawyer, who was thoughtful enough to enclose the details of both Lloyd Samuels’s place of business and his private residence.
    Dr. Samuels was pleased to hear from Julius, and his first letter was notable for an excess of excitement, which reminded Julius of his friend’s laughable attempts to make his stuttering, overly verbose points during classroom discussions. On more than one occasion, he remembered looking across at Lloyd and wondering just what would become of the jovial, plump boy who held his pencil like a spike, and who by the time he donned long trousers was astute enough to have given up any ambitions of the island scholarship. Young Lloyd’s accent was already beginning to be seasoned with a slight American affectation, which suggested the direction in which his mind was starting to drift, but a medical school in a provincial Canadian university, as opposed to an East Coast Ivy League establishment, was probably the right level for his friend. Dr. Samuels’s second letter encouraged Julius to meet with the chief party organizer in London, but after a day-long excursion to the capital, during which Julius spent much of a frustrating afternoon and early evening sitting in a noisy London Transport depot tea room, waiting for this busy bus driver to discover time between shifts to discuss the matter of their country’s road to independence, he wrote to Lloyd and wished him well with his political endeavours. A week later, Julius received the telegram suggesting that he leave the south coast of England, move to London, and take over as chief party organizer in Britain, with a salary that would be drawn from whatever subscriptions he could raise and supplemented by sales of a projected monthly newspaper to be called The People’s Voice , although Lloyd made it clear that Julius was free, within reason, to use whatever title he wished.
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    “Eventually I’ll have to give some talks and go out on the road, but not now, not during summer, for people are either away or just relaxing.”
    His wife was standing by the window and staring across the street at a café outside of which a few small metal tables, surrounded by a random assortment of chairs, were arranged on the pavement in a manner that blocked the flow of pedestrian traffic. It was Monica who had organized their move to London and found this single bed-sitting-room in Ladbroke Grove, a down-at-heel but affordable location whose chief virtue was its proximity to the tube station. Travelling up to London by train and scanning cards in newsagents’ windows had finally given her something to do, for although she had not let on to Julius, she was not sure how much more she could have endured of her aimless existence on the south coast. Once she had set up their flat and explored every nook and cranny of the drab seaside town, she had quickly come face-to-face with the dispiriting reality that beyond Julius, she had no community.
    “Right now I have to identify nationals working or studying here so that when the time comes, we have a caucus of votes to draw upon.”
    “But you’re not independent yet.”
    She said this without turning from the window to face him, and although he wanted to admonish her, he said nothing.
    “When the cross-party delegation arrives in London, I figure I’ll accompany them to Whitehall for the independence