CHAPTER II : ANNIE,
Sometime in August disaster struck. I received a letter from my father asking me to enroll my sister Annie at a technical college for interior design and to find her a room near where I lived. A flurry of letters from my side exposing the dangers to my sister’s morality and sexual integrity followed. I tried to be as diplomatic as possible. I explained the local scene, the sexual freedom and that a girl was expected to sleep with the boy from the very first date. I did not tell them that I did not relish the role of a keeper of my sister. Or to have a pregnant sister on my hands. I did not tell them that little Annie, who was not so little actually, just a year younger than I, a pretty, well-built girl with large eyes, a large sexy mouth, fine teeth and silky blond hair, was by far more experienced than I, far more audacious, and was rarely without a boyfriend both in and out of school during our summers in Alexandria. All done secretly, discreetly, and without a clue to our trusting parents. I did not tell them that she often tried to fix me up with her girlfriends but was defeated by the syndrome of my abysmal timidity. Yes, she loved me and her love was reciprocated but the thought of being her custodian overwhelmed me. My agonized and undeniably selfish efforts to keep her stuck in Egypt brought no result and I soon started a search for a college and later for a room. With stoicism and gloomy resignation I accepted the inevitable. An intrusion into my carefree existence and the huge responsibility for my sister’s wellbeing.
My parents sent me a certificate of study from the English School and the local matriculation of doubtful value but at least she spoke English and that was enough of a qualification for the Interior Design section of the Hammersmith College of Arts. I was relieved, paid the reasonable fee for the first term and round about the middle of September, before the influx of foreign students, found a lovely big furnished room with a bathroom in Bina Gardens not far from my room. A private bath, my God, unheard of luxury for our student budgets. And to forestall as much as possible her boredom and desperate rendezvous that might lead to amorous adventures, I rented a television set and installed it in her room. She arrived accompanied by our father who handed her, so to speak, to me, stayed two days in a nearby hotel and left. The days were cold and he saw that the only coat I wore was a flimsy raincoat over a pullover. On the day he left he gave me his heavy woolen coat. He was shorter than I and full-bodied with a healthy belly. I thanked him pretending I was pleased though I looked utterly ridiculous in it. No chance that I would ever use it and wondered how to get rid of it. I did not know any needy souls to give it away to and Omar suggested I sell it. A few days later we took the tube to Paddington where an old Jew kept a shop of used clothing. It was musty and dark inside, the only light filtering through the dusty, grimy shop window. A single, very large table was packed haphazardly with ancient suits and trousers, which were creased and smelly and as depressing as the middle-aged shop owner. We showed him the coat. He had the same build as my father and immediately tried it on. He suddenly looked respectable in it. I think I’ll keep it for me self, he said. I’ll give you fifteen bob. Oh for heaven’s sake, I said. Fifteen bob? Yes, fifteen bob. Eyes indignant and glaring. Take it or leave it. Omar looked at me with a guilty air for he brought me here in good faith. I thought what would I do with it if I lugged it back home? Fifteen bob were six pocket books at two and six each. We took the money and left.
The next few days I consecrated to Annie. We walked around the neighborhood, which was also mine, to show her the shops, supermarkets and restaurants. I showed her my room and my little expanding library, which hardly interested her. I took her to Hammersmith by underground from the Gloucester Rd. tube station, which was close by and had her enroll at the Interior Design section. For the next two evenings I reserved Omar’s company and we spent both evenings strolling around Piccadilly Circus and Soho with the fascinating collection of the different breeds of young people and huge variety of oddballs. Omar gave his best performance at teasing and chatting the young women that were there for a good time and incidentally, or perhaps intentionally, impressed and amused Annie. We showed her the famous West End theatres and walked to Trafalgar Square with Nelson’s column, the National Gallery, the majestically solid and stolid buildings all round, the milling crowds and the night-owl pigeons that in the well-lit square kept human hours.
A week later Annie was fully acclimatized. She gave her room’s aspect a feminine touch by hanging a few painting reproductions on the wall and bought a colorful bed cover for the double bed. On the mantelpiece over a fireplace that had a gas heater she arranged a few bibelots and trinkets bought on the cheap, and her bathroom acquired soaps, shampoos, face creams, body lotions and washing powder for her underwear. She began her courses at Hammersmith early October and seemed to have made a few acquaintances of both sexes. What surprised and amused her were the variety of accents with which English was spoken. There were a few upper-class la-di-dah students, others with clear BBC pronunciation but also a few cockneys and north of England accents which she tried to imitate to me for laughs. I had also started my sporadic attendance at the tutorial college but invariably spent an hour in the evening with her for company and a little television.
Omar dropped by quite often and Annie was very much taken by him. I was not too happy about that because I did not want her to get hurt. Of course she knew him from school but I told her here in London he had turned into an obsessive philanderer and she said she did not blame him. Girls must be after him like mad. He is almost as good looking as a beautiful girl, she said. And did you notice, he has hardly any facial hair. I wonder if he’s bisexual. Well, he never made a pass at me, Annie, I said, but bear in mind what I told you. It was a fair warning. The rest was up to her. They had become familiar and friendly by now and Omar was very physical when he was with her. Innocently physical supposedly, but physical nonetheless. He caressed her hair, massaged her shoulders, kissed her fondly on the cheeks in my presence after a joke or a good laugh or an outburst of enthusiasm and once as she was washing some coffee cups in the bathroom he followed her put his arms around her and I saw him kissing her neck from behind. I heard Annie giggle and I had the urge to go and stop the game but decided it was better for someone to be like her than to be like me.
On Sundays we fell into the habit of visiting an old relative of ours who lived in London since the end of the War. A spinster from my grandmother’s side of the family originating from Cyprus. Before and during the War she lived in Egypt and left for London just after the end of hostilities in the difficult post-war years of rationing and the return to normality. Being a Cypriot she had a British passport and I did not know the reason for her departure from Egypt to live in London totally isolated from her relatives. I had her address all along but during my first year in London I did not venture to meet her. I thought that now it would be a good idea to look her up with Annie who inquired about her and hoped that it might give her one more thing to keep her busy and out of harm’s way. She lived in Russell Square near the British Museum area, which at one time was the meeting point of the Bloomsbury group of intellectuals of the 1920s and 30s comprising of Clive and Vanessa Bell, Virginia Wolf, Roger Fry, the novelist E.M. Forster, Lytton Strachey and the famous economist John Maynard Keynes. Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley and T.S. Eliot were also associated with this group, which in the early 1930s ceased to exist. Russell Square was now a reduced and underprivileged area.
Aunt Agatha lived in a tiny basement apartment in a London Council building. A small woman in her sixties with a miserable pension which she supplemented by addressing envelopes for publicity brochures from long lists of names and addresses at a pathetically meagre rate per thousand envelopes. She also did some typing for assorted clients. Small, gaunt, a little bent with gray, short hair which gave one the impression that she cut it herself to save the fee of a hairdresser. She had an unattractive and yet not unpleasant face with a large nose and thick sensual lips and her teeth seemed intact. I had heard stories in Cairo that she was not altogether sane. Not raving mad but the loneliness of her existence eventually took its toll. At one time she repeatedly wrote letters to the BBC complaining that the radio announcer, for she did not own a television set, harassed her, insulted her and made indecent proposals. She was, of course, ignored. The truth is that during our time with her we saw no indication of mental abnormality. She was thrilled to see us and pathetically, almost begging, insisted to have us every Sunday for lunch. We were a heaven-sent antidote to her unbearable loneliness. She cooked a decent meal, always with meat and fruit and what, with a smile, she called champagne which was a bottle of fizzy alcoholic cider. Quite delicious at that. We usually arrived with Annie at one and had to literally tear ourselves away against her protestation at around four. I could not take a minute more in that depressing hole.
During one of our lunches, while she was pottering in her minuscule kitchen I picked a book that was lying on her bedside table and found in it a deliciously sultry and sensual picture of Dorothy Dandridge. I did not tell Annie. I did not want to shock and alarm her but that picture started me thinking that Aunt Agatha was lesbian. In any case, it was too late to matter. The suffering of that part of her life was almost over. Eventually I began skipping those Sunday reunions. Not altogether, but at first on alternate Sundays and then two out of every three and after a time much more often. Annie kept up the visits. She was more compassionate than I and less selfish but I found Omar’s company more congenial. We roamed the deserted Sunday streets of London looking at other basement flats and more than a few times we found those cheap basement flats were shared by two or three or more working girls. Omar called and asked for an imaginary address and started a conversation which led to an invitation for coffee, many laughs and jokes, a pleasant afternoon for all and, on leaving, a date with a girl or two, which Omar followed up or simply forgot about.