A Bit of Difference by Sefi Atta Page B

yourself short. Of course they would employ you. Of course they would. With your background?”
    â€œWhat background?” Deola says, stepping on her accelerator, instead of admitting she is aware of how mediocre her career is. She is heading in the direction of Trafalgar Square.
    â€œCalm down,” he says. “I’m just saying. You ought to aim higher. You’re too self-effacing. You go for a job like that and you’ll end up leaving. It’s the same way you found yourself working with a bunch of yobs wherever.”
    â€œHolborn. A consultancy firm in Holborn.”
    â€œWith NHS clients in Wolverhampton.”
    She slaps his hand down. She can’t tell him anything.
    â€œSorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean for it to come out that way.”
    â€œHm.”
    â€œMay I smoke?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOut of your window, I mean.”
    â€œI said no.”
    He rubs his forehead. “God, you’re such an old fanny. So what is it then, you struggle with the world of commerce and industry or the world of commerce and industry struggles with you?” His American accent is dodgy.
    â€œWho are you quoting now?” she asks.
    â€œBaldwin.”
    â€œWhat did Baldwin have to say about that?”
    â€œHe didn’t ask you the question.”
    He is also a James Baldwin enthusiast, but he considers Baldwin’s experiences American, unlike his, which he might describe as aristocratic English because his grandfather was knighted by the Queen. His snobbishness is exasperating. Everyone is a yob to him. He won’t accept that racism exists in England. “It’s just an excuse for the West Indian immies not to work,” he once said. “Class is everything over here.”
    â€œMy job is not bad,” she says. “I get to travel. I’ve just come back from the States. Before that I was in India.”
    â€œIndia?”
    â€œYes, and I’m going home in a week.”
    From the little she saw of Delhi, it was cleaner and better organized than Lagos, but there were similarities, like the crowded markets and the occasional spectacle of someone defecating in public.
    â€œWhere is home?” Bandele asks.
    â€œWhere else?”
    He rubs his chin. “Nigeria is not my home.”
    â€œIt’s home for me.”
    â€œGood luck to you. I haven’t been back in so long I’d probably catch dengue fever the moment I set foot in that country.”
    â€œMore like malaria.”
    â€œNigerians, ye savages.”
    â€œYour head is not correct,” she says.
    This slips out and for a while, her remorse shuts her up. Bandele has been hospitalized for depression once before, but even at his lowest he was never incoherent. He also appeared physically fit, yet his depression was often so crippling he couldn’t get out of bed. Now, he says it is manageable. He calls psychiatric patients “schizoids.” If she protests, he says, “What?”
    His flat is in a state when they get there—not abnormally so. There is dirty laundry in his living room, a clutter of plates in his sink and a saucer with cigarette butts. He writes in longhand and uses a computer, but he has never learned to type properly. He has papers all over the floor, some crumpled up in balls. He writes everywhere as if he is addicted, in notebooks he carries, on paper napkins in restaurants and on cinema stubs in the dark. He goes to Pimlico Library to borrow books and to his local Sainsbury’s to buy frozen meals. He heats them in his oven because he doesn’t have a microwave. His flat smells of lasagna and cigarette fumes.
    â€œDoes the writing help?” she asks.
    â€œHelp what?” he says, throwing his keys on a chair.
    Her hands are in her pockets. “I mean in expressing yourself.”
    â€œIt’s not about expressing myself.”
    â€œWhat is it about, then?”
    â€œI just don’t want to feel so