“It’s a ski resort, but it’s not pretentious. In Jackson, they say people who go to Aspen expect somebody to tie their ski boots up for them,” Georgina said.
“The thought of skiing in America makes me quite ill,” Alexa said.
“Why?” Hannah asked.
“Have they got a Disney station in the resort, with Mickey Mouse in ski gear?” Alexa asked.
“Alexa has only been to America once, when she was in school, but she loves to hate it from afar,” Georgina said.
“I’ve loved America from afar my whole life,” Obinze said. Alexa turned to him in slight surprise, as though she had not expected him to speak. Under the chandelier light, her red hair took on a strange, unnatural glow.
“What I’ve noticed being here is that many English people are in awe of America but also deeply resent it,” Obinze added.
“Perfectly true,” Phillip said, nodding at Obinze. “Perfectly true. It’s the resentment of a parent whose child has become far more beautiful and with a far more interesting life.”
“But the Americans love us Brits, they love the accent and the Queen and the double decker,” Emenike said. There, it had been said: the man considered himself British.
“And the great revelation Emenike had while we were there?” Georgina said, smiling. “The difference between the American and British ‘bye.’ ”
“Bye?” Alexa asked.
“Yes. He says the Brits draw it out much more, while Americans make it short.”
“That was a great revelation. It explained everything about the difference between both countries,” Emenike said, knowing that they would laugh, and they did. “I was also thinking about the difference in approaching foreignness. Americans will smile at you and be extremely friendly but if your name is not Cory or Chad, they make no effort at saying it properly. The Brits will be surly and will be suspicious if you’re too friendly but they will treat foreign names as though they are actually valid names.”
“That’s interesting,” Hannah said.
Georgina said, “It’s a bit tiresome to talk about America being insular, not that we help that much, since if something major happens in America, it is the headline in Britain; something major happens here, it is on the back page in America, if at all. But I do think the most troubling thing was the garishness of the nationalism, don’t you think so, darling?” Georgina turned to Emenike.
“Absolutely,” Emenike said. “Oh, and we went to a rodeo. Hugo thought we might fancy a bit of culture.”
There was a general, tittering laughter.
“And we saw this quite unbelievable parade of little children with heavily made-up faces and then there was a lot of flag-waving and a lot of ‘God Bless America.’ I was terrified that it was the sort of place where you did not know what might happen to you if you suddenly said, ‘I don’t like America.’ ”
“I found America quite jingoistic, too, when I did my fellowship training there,” Mark said.
“Mark is a pediatric surgeon,” Georgina said to Obinze.
“One got the sense that people—progressive people, that is, because American conservatives come from an entirely different planet, even to this Tory—felt that they could very well criticize their country but they didn’t like it at all when you did,” Mark said.
“Where were you?” Emenike asked, as if he knew America’s smallest corners.
“Philadelphia. A specialty hospital called the Children’s Hospital. It was quite a remarkable place and the training was very good. It might have taken me two years in England to see the rare cases that I had in a month there.”
“But you didn’t stay,” Alexa said, almost triumphantly.
“I hadn’t planned on staying.” Mark’s face never quite dissolved into any expression.
“Speaking of which, I’ve just got involved with this fantastic charity that’s trying to stop the UK from hiring so many African health workers,” Alexa said. “There are simply no doctors and nurses left on that continent. It’s an absolute tragedy! African doctors should stay in Africa.”
“Why shouldn’t they want to practice where there is regular electricity and regular pay?” Mark asked, his tone flat. Obinze sensed that he did not like Alexa at all. “I’m from Grimsby and I certainly don’t want to work in a district hospital there.”
“But it isn’t quite the same thing, is it? We’re speaking of some of the world’s poorest people. The doctors have a responsibility as Africans,” Alexa said. “Life isn’t fair, really. If they have the privilege of that medical degree then it comes with a responsibility to help their people.”
“I see. I don’t suppose any of us should have that responsibility for the blighted towns in the north of England?” Mark said.
Alexa’s face reddened. In the sudden tense silence, the air wrinkling between them all, Georgina got up and said, “Everyone ready for my roast lamb?”
They all praised the meat, which Obinze wished had stayed a little longer in the oven; he carefully cut around his slice, eating the sides that had grayed from cooking and leaving on his plate the bits stained with pinkish blood. Hannah led the conversation, as though to smooth the air, her voice calming, bringing up subjects they would all agree on, changing to something else if she sensed a looming disagreement. Their conversation was symphonic, voices flowing into one another, in agreement: how atrocious to treat those Chinese cockle pickers like that, how absurd, the idea of fees for higher education, how preposterous that fox-hunting supporters had stormed Parliament. They laughed when Obinze said, “I don’t understand why fox hunting is such a big issue in this country. Aren’t there more important things?”
“What could possibly be more important?” Mark asked drily.
“Well, it’s the only way we know how to fight our class warfare,” Alexa said. “The landed gentry and the aristocrats hunt, you see, and we liberal middle classes fume about it. We want to take their silly little toys away.”
“We certainly do,” Phillip said. “It’s monstrous.”
“Did you read about Blunkett saying he doesn’t know how many immigrants there are in the country?” Alexa asked, and Obinze immediately tensed, his chest tightening.
“ ‘Immigrant,’ of course, is code for Muslim,” Mark said.
“If he really wanted to know, he would go to all the construction sites in this country and do a head count,” Phillip said.
“It was quite interesting to see how this plays out in America,” Georgina said. “They’re kicking up a fuss about immigration as well. Although, of course, America has always been kinder to immigrants than Europe.”
“Well, yes, but that is because countries in Europe were based on exclusion and not, as in America, on inclusion,” Mark said.
“But it’s also a different psychology, isn’t it?” Hannah said. “European countries are surrounded by countries that are similar to one another, while America has Mexico, which is really a developing country, and so it creates a different psychology about immigration and borders.”
“But we don’t have immigrants from Denmark. We have immigrants from Eastern Europe, which is our Mexico,” Alexa said.
“Except, of course, for race,” Georgina said. “Eastern Europeans are white. Mexicans are not.”
“How did you see race in America, by the way, Emenike?” Alexa asked. “It’s an iniquitously racist country, isn’t it?”
“He doesn’t have to go to America for that, Alexa,” Georgina said.
“It seemed to me that in America blacks and whites work together but don’t play together, and here blacks and whites play together but don’t work together,” Emenike said.
The others nodded thoughtfully, as though he had said something profound, but Mark said, “I’m not sure I quite understand that.”
“I think class in this country is in the air that people breathe. Everyone knows their place. Even the people who are angry about class have somehow accepted their place,” Obinze said. “A white boy and a black girl who grow up in the same working-class town in this country can get together and race will be secondary, but in America, even if the white boy and black girl grow up in the same neighborhood, race would be primary.”
Alexa gave him another surprised look.
“A bit simplified but yes, that’s sort of what I meant,” Emenike said, slowly, leaning back on his chair, and Obinze sensed a rebuke. He should have been quiet; this, after all, was Emenike’s stage.
“But you haven’t really had to deal with any racism here, have you, Emenike?” Alexa asked, and her tone implied that she already knew the answer to the question was no. “Of course people are prejudiced, but aren’t we all prejudiced?”
“Well, no,” Georgina said firmly. “You should tell the story of the cabbie, darling.”
“Oh, that story,” Emenike said, as he got up to serve the cheese plate, murmuring something in Hannah’s ear that made her smile and touch his arm. How thrilled he was, to live in Georgina’s world.