by I. Bismuth

August 4: Today we arrived back at Terminal Five after three weeks of ethical holiday-making in a land replete with victimhood. On the drive into central London we were struck by the contrast between the still extensive tracts of unoccupied greenery even between Heathrow and home, and the overpopulated khaki aridity, beyond the tourist pools, of the whole of the country we had left a few hours earlier.

We feel it must be obvious to anyone with a serious commitment to Anti-Racism that the principle by which specific good things, such as houses and medical care, are allocated to individuals and families on the basis of need, is crying out to be extended to whole populations and to more general good things, such as countries. There can be no doubt that the islands off the northwest coast of Europe are in the category of general good things and that populations trapped in sub-standard parts of the world need them, and need them now. We are confident that when the remaining racist objections (always masquerading as common sense) are finally overcome, these populations will, albeit belatedly, be allocated the general good things they need.

August 5: Since our holiday would spare Hilda any cooking, tea-making, bed-making, boiler-repairing, bath-running, silver-polishing, floor-scrubbing, and washing and ironing, we thought she could make herself useful by redecorating the house, and now that we have had a chance to inspect the new Zuber wallpaper and the gleaming woodwork, I must say she has done a job for which any professional would be only too anxious to submit a bill.

Hilda is our treasure. Who or what she is besides that, we can only guess. We are fairly sure her name is not Hilda, but, for the sake of convenience, we have trained her to answer to it.

Her arrival in our household a year ago was providential. Our last maid, a part-time Brazilian tap-dancer, left us suddenly, having been put on a Conservative Party A-List and entering the county set, thus plunging us into two desperate weeks of balancing the dirty dishes in and around the kitchen sink and wearing smalls well past their wash-by date. Then one morning we found Hilda curled up on the doorstep like an undrowned kitten. We had no hesitation in taking her in. We pointed out the overflowing laundry basket, the furniture greying with dust, and the smug spiders who up to this point could not believe their luck, and, despite the cultural gulf, she understood at once what needed to be done, and set to it.  We found her to be a willing worker with a happy-go-lucky attitude towards the tiresome formalities of passports and wages.

As to her origins, we tried asking her in Thai, Tamil, Tagalog, and in some languages that did not begin with T, only to receive blank, blank, and blanker stares in reply. So we showed her a map of the world and made Where-you-come-from? gestures all over it. She seemed to know what we meant, but, after moving her right index finger through the latitudes south of the equator, she continued over it, moving north to 51 degrees, and then headed west, not stopping until she reached the Greenwich Meridian. Then she looked up at us, grinned and nodded, stabbed her sternum with her left index finger, and said, ‘Boreeteesh, Boreeteesh.’

Whatever her origins, she has made herself indispensable. She is self-contained, causes us no bother at all, and when her daily duties are completed, she retires to a wardrobe for the night.  Now, this last simple statement of fact has been known to elicit all sorts of hurtful innuendoes from friends and colleagues, but it is not nearly as bad as it sounds. The wardrobe is unusually large and Hilda is unusually small. There is ample space under the sheltering jackets and trousers for her sleeping bag and her alarm clock, and, with her knees flexed, she can assume a perfectly natural dreaming position.

August 6: Lucy returned home today. Physically she has almost recovered from her African odyssey, and while she claims to be still nursing emotional scars, she already has a new boyfriend, Abdul, a pharmacist she met while receiving treatment for something she caught from Nkwanwu. Later this week she is off again on her travels, this time to accompany Abdul on a tour of his homeland, Norway.

August 7: My sister Meg spent the afternoon here with three of her seven children. Seven children, and still she purses her lips whenever I ask her if she is calling it quits! I hold Walter responsible for this wild pullulation. He ought never to have indulged Meg’s taste for fecundity. I am aware that my stricture here could be misinterpreted as a demand for a return to patriarchy, but that would be to slur my fully accredited set of acceptable attitudes. It has always been my fervent belief that the woman’s right to choose is paramount. However, equally fervent is my belief that no woman should abuse her right by making a choice from the discontinued menu.

Even education, that bulwark against tradition, has failed in Meg’s case.  She is an educated woman who has thrown it all away on her children. If she had not wasted herself on serial motherhood, she could today be at a university doing what I do to the minds of the young.

I have to admit that the afternoon itself was a great success. The six of us had a marvellous time rampaging over the house, playing hide-and-seek and blind man’s buff, and then filling ourselves with cakes and jellies.

August 8: Abhorrent opinions are an ever-present danger in an Anti-Racist society, and we must always be on the alert for them. Our success so far in reducing rates of Whiteness must not make us complacent. Every one of us can be a guardian, listening for the wrong word, the wrong silence, watching for the wrong look, the wrong look away. You may not always be sure at first that you have seen or heard evil, but if you have suspicions, act on them. Do not let them pass. If you need to make further enquires, make them. Better that there should be a thousand false alarms than that one infringement of Anti-Racism should go unlogged.

Sometimes even a look over the garden fence will reveal a wrong against Anti-Racism. For example, there is living next door to us an attractive young sunbather I have reason to believe may be all outer beauty and all inner ugliness.

The house to our left is divided into four flats, and she occupies the ground floor, so she has easy access to the back lawn. In the good weather she has taken to removing most of her clothes and deploying her limbs on a provocatively-shaped garden lounger, whereon she proceeds to anoint herself with an unguent of unknown factor and then bury her nose in a book.

The first couple of times, I assumed it must be one of this year’s sizzling summer bargains with up to 40% off, and thought no more of it. But yesterday, when I happened to glance out and see her posing in the sun again, I transferred my gaze to the cover of the book and it seemed to me, even at half a lawn’s length, that its colours were creepily restrained for a harmless best-seller. They seemed to portend more serious and more sinister content. This called for further investigation. But I had chosen my moment badly. As my careful fingers were easing back the curtain for a better look, the sun went in and so did she.

So, when I saw she was out there again today, reading and browning, I leapt up the stairs and excavated my 8 x 30 binoculars from the bottom of a packed drawer that did not want to open, and inched towards the bedroom window for a discreet snooping session before the clouds returned.

With no tripod to steady it, an eightfold magnification blew up my inquisitorial tremor and set her book afloat on a choppy sea, but I could make out the first part of the title, ‘Saving Your ...’ The rest was hidden behind a raised left shin. Did this confirm my suspicions?  Not if it was ‘Saving Your Breath’ or ‘Saving Your Marriage’ or ‘Saving Your Batteries’. But what if it was ‘Saving Your Race’?  I needed a vantage point fitting to the moral elevation of my question.

The binoculars were strapless, so after I pulled the drawstring on the loft ladder, I had to cling on with one hand and one elbow. I ascended through the hatch into a wonderland of cardboard boxes, empty chocolate tins, jam jars, chipped dinner plates, hardened brushes, old spoons, chisels without handles, shelves from departed refrigerators, cans of congealed paint, all of them so placed that they could be trodden on and stumbled over by an Anti-Racist in a hurry.

Standing on a retired dining chair, I pushed open the skylight, but I was still not high enough for a clear sight of the suspect.  Now, many professors of my years would have given up there and then. But I strive to maintain a high state of physical preparedness for just such challenges to a decent society. Disregarding elementary safety precautions, I heaved myself up with more elbow work so that my feet left the chair and I dangled like a two-reeler comedian. One more heroic groan, and I was out on the roof.

Now I had both hands free to focus on next door’s reading matter. From my new perch I would have a clear view over her frustrating knee to the full title. But her knee was gone. She had turned on her side, how languorously I cannot say, and was now holding the book at an awkward angle.

‘Bizzy! Bizzy!’ It was Rose calling through the hatch. ‘Bizzy, what are you doing up there?’

‘I’m trying to see something repugnant.’

‘Well, don’t be too long. I’ve made you a cup of tea.’

I re-applied the binoculars to my eyes, but the suspect had shifted her position again. She was sitting up. She was looking directly at me. I tried to duck out of view, but there was nowhere to duck without breaking bones. In my revealed state I fumbled with the binoculars and they slipped from my grasp, clattering down the tiles and, after a sickening silence, smashing on next door’s patio.

She was standing now, her loveliness covered by a Botticelli arm, and she fixed her stare on my own helpless torso in a vain attempt to shrivel my moral authority. And then, with vengeful dignity, she gathered up her clothes, her bottle of Evian, her tube of sun cream, and that wretched book, and started making a call on her mobile as she returned to the house.

Once I was safely in off the roof, I had time to drink my tea and retire to my study, for it was almost an hour before there was a hammering at the front door. I went out on to the landing (my study is on the second floor) and listened to an exchange between a vulgar male voice angrily talking about his girlfriend, and Hilda making Boreeteesh noises.

The thuggish manner of the suspect’s protector was decisive. The last word on that book cover must have been ‘Race’.

After a minute, Rose went to investigate.

‘I’m sorry, our maid doesn’t speak any English.  Can I help?’

‘Do you know you’ve got a pervert living here?’

‘No, how awful!’

‘He’d better watch it, that’s all.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I don’t like perverts.’

‘No, I can understand that.’

‘They make me sick.’

‘Well, they would.’

‘So he’d better watch it. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Right. That’s it then. Right.’

And off he went. I thought he might at least have brought back my binoculars. After all, even if they are beyond repair, they still belong to me and, for all he and his girlfriend know, they are of sentimental value. Still, I suppose it’s too much to expect racists to show any basic decency.