We finally arrived in Southampton, where I have never forgotten that the Customs officers in the huge Customs Hall where we, fellow passengers, were all packed, were being very thorough in their checks. I was fascinated by an ever-patient officer nearby, whom I could hear asking one gentleman more than once if the gold watch he, the passenger, was wearing was as old as he was claiming. “Yes”, insisted this man. “I have worn this watch for years!” This was when the officer quietly took out a magnifying glass, noting that there were no micro-scratches, no signs of wear and tear at all on the back of this brand-new watch. I witnessed the man being led away by the officer, though I had no idea of what would happen to the miscreant thereafter. This incident frightened me, as I realized, perhaps for the first time, the power of the law and the consequences of not following that law. Decades later, the incident came back to me in full force as I stood, terrified beyond belief, in the Arrivals Hall of Bangkok Airport, Thailand, where a Customs officer’s dog had sat down beside me. This meant that the animal had detected fruit in my luggage. Yet I knew I had nothing illegal with me. However, the dog sat resolutely by my side. I could not understand how the animal could make such a mistake. As far as I was concerned, I was innocent.
The dog wasn’t the one who had made the mistake! I was the one at fault. Unbeknownst to me, an apple I had forgotten had rolled along the inside of a zippered pocket on the outside of my travel bag, where it was completely hidden. I was so frightened that I was going to be led away. I was almost shaking in fear. Fortunately, the officer believed my story, and I was let go. I could never be a smuggler. I simply could not bear the fear of being outside the law.
I was happy to be back in England and loved being able to see again my grandmother and her husband who lived in Portsmouth. We saw too, my beloved uncle (my mother’s younger brother), his wife and their two daughters, both a little younger than me, and visited some of my father’s sisters who lived in London. Such visits were relatively few because of the distances involved.
At first, it seemed exciting to me to be back in England, especially at such a pretty time of the year with the grass so very green, rather than several feet tall and brown, and with the Spring and Summer to look forward to. I knew that we would have to start over again from scratch, looking for somewhere to live, and that my mother would go to work to bring in some much-needed money. It had cost us in more ways than one, to spend those two years in Africa.
What I didn’t know, was that it was going to cost us in more ways than one to come back to England, too. Like my brothers, I never questioned our parents’ decisions. We just went with the flow, adapting as best we could. We weren’t encouraged to share our thoughts and feelings on any subject at all, let alone on where we should live and what, as a family, we should do. “Keep calm and carry on” whilst maintaining that famous British stiff upper lip, could have been applied to us, children, too, as we continued to cope with numerous upheavals, and endless changes in schools with no idea at all of what was coming up next.
