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CHRISTINE GODFREYWorlds Within Worlds"I defined myself, and saw that my subject was not my sensibility, myinward development, but the worlds I contained within myself ... "V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of ArrivalShe had arrived in London in 1960 to signs saying: ROOMS TO LET - NOCOLOUREDS, NO IRISH, NO DOGS. At first Joan protested to the landladies,"But soon I will be a British citizen." The landladies shook their heads, "Can't youread - NO COLOUREDS the sign says. Anyway, who learnt you to speak Englishso posh?"After a while Joan Bernard stopped explaining that she'd always spoken Englishand just shrugged and said. "Oh, I learnt on the P & 0 boat.""Don't matter how posh you speak. We don't want no coloureds here."Eventually Joan found a poky flat that no-one else wanted. By then she'd givenup saying that she was an Anglo Indian. What was the point? The English knewso little about India. It was the same at the school where she taught. The otherteachers asked her if she left India because she was starving. The children wantedto know if she could charm snakes. Well, at least she'd found a job. So many ofher friends told her they arrived at interviews only to be told that: "the positionhad just been filled". At her interview the Headmaster congratulated Joan on her"precise and refined" speech. She didn't ask what he expected.He asked Joan why she left India. She tried to explain: at first when the Britishleft India some Anglo Indians talked of 'going home' - though they had neverbeen there. But for her and many others India was home.The Headmaster gazed out the window. Joan looked around his study, ftlled withmany years of ribbons and trophies, and photos of soccer and cricket teams, schoolplays and Christmas parties. Joan paused. How could he understand what it meantto be regarded as a stranger in your own country. The Indian Government promisedAnglo Indians they would not be treated as aliens, but despite official reassurancestheir lives became hedged by prejudice. The extremists who distributed pamphletsabout giving Anglo Indians the boot could be easily dismissed as "imperialists", butthen the papers and cinema news started to carry the same message. Slowly shebegan to feel an odd sense of dislocation, as in a dream when you open a familiarroom only to find it empty. Everything was familiar and yet somehow altered.The Headmaster looked back at her. He leaned forward. Joan continued. She'dbeen a teacher in Calcutta before she married. When her husband died suddenlyshe returned to teaching. She was ready to prove herself, knowing that classes hadchanged since the days of the Raj. But no matter how hard she worked, or howWESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989 23