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women just out of their teens look: legs strong and breasts full, and with a glow on their cheeks, like young willing fulfilling women.
    Boysie remains quiet, more than being silent; for he feels uneasy being so close to these young West Indians; and he feels suddenly old and useless because of what he knows about himself and his marriage; and he sees these West Indians, silent, and baiting, waiting for him to say something (or even look) about their women, or about the way they are dressed; for they are young and strong, wearing mod fashions, pimpish and expensive, and in their manner is the cockiness of the universitystudent, assurance in this cold elevator, of exactly where they are going in this country. This assurance seems to exude from them the closer they stand to the women and when the women touch them in simple loving gestures. Nobody is talking now. But the whirring of the unoiled movement up, some of them trying to ignore the movement, or to pretend that they are not bored and uncomfortable — the whirring is perhaps like the constructing of their individual thoughts.
    “Imagine, leaving the West Indies to live in a place like this!”
    It was one of the Canadian women who spoke. Her voice was like thunder it was so natural and so unexpected. Dots shot her eyes in the woman’s direction, and the woman acknowledged it and smiled. Dots just looked off. Without changing her expression of boredom and discomfort, she felt the atmosphere become relaxed. Somebody sighed, or breathed more easily. And the boredom of watching the floor shift on the illuminated panel above their heads was less obvious.
    “What would make people leave a nice warm place like the West Indies to come up to a place like Canada …”
    The elevator reached its stop, and they all got out. And they were all going in the same direction, towards Boysie’s apartment. As Boysie reached his door, he fumbled in his pocket, waiting to see where they were going.
    “Goodnight.”
    It was the same Canadian woman who had mentioned the West Indies. Dots was taken by surprise. The shock opened her mouth, and relaxed her face; and she smiled and said goodnight. The young people moved to the next door and went in. Boysie felt very insecure having them so adjacently close to him.
    “Nice kids,” Dots said. She unlocked the door with herown key (Boysie was still fumbling) and walked straight into the bedroom, leaving the door wide open for him to close. Once inside, he was safe and soundproofed from them. And his protecting apartment soon made him forget them. From the bedroom Dots was saying something about West Indian young men. “Nice kids,” she said, not really talking to her husband. And Boysie hoped to find more in her words than she might have intended, so that he might pick a quarrel with her. “Nice kids. And look so strong. And clean. They make me proud to see them behaving so.”
    Boysie took off his winter coat, and threw it on the chesterfield couch. Dots could hear him moving around, just walking and making noise, and she closed the bedroom door because she knew that should he continue walking around and moving around, she would have to answer him. He was like a lion, sparring. He sat down and spread his legs in front of him, and loosened his tie. He had become a man who wore ties almost everywhere he went; he had changed his manner, his manners, his appearance of relaxation and of leisure, in the same way as he had changed his hair style. He had stopped going to the Negro barbershop he used to like so much; had chosen the Black Nationalist barbershop with its flags and posters and colours of black, green and red, its heavy music of James Brown and Reggae and Afros and photographs of Marcus Garvey; but when he found himself becoming out of place among those who were more conversant in the new slogans than in the old black ideology, he stopped going, and went instead to the Italian barbershop just around the corner from where he lived. In