The name would explain itself over time, but the weather would remain unimpressive.
The only other non-British student in Hortensia’s class was a girl named Kehinde. She was younger than average, sixteen, but full of talent and chutzpah. It was known by the students that Kehinde was from Nigeria but, for the four years of study, she denied it, referred to herself as a Startian, from an unknown unnameable planet. She answered only to the name K, rather than the mispronounced (deliberate or not) versions of her name that her classmates called her. Although Hortensia had not been friends with K, they’d had one honest conversation. Hortensia found herself alone with K one evening in the workshop. A young fashion designer was teaching at Bailer’s for a term. He had caused some excitement in Florence, at one of the infamous Giorgini soirées, with what he called ‘capes and clutches’. At Bailer’s he encouraged the students to see textile design and fashion as one-and-the-same thing. He instructed them in pattern-making. Hortensia enjoyed the sewing machine, she liked the force of the pedal (the power of that) and steadying the needle, with her right hand on the balance wheel. She paused in her concentration.
‘Why do you lie?’ Hortensia asked.
‘About?’ Kehinde didn’t look up from cutting; she’d marked out the borders of the garment in white chalk.
‘Where you’re from. Are you ashamed?’ It had been boiling in Hortensia for a while now. They were both teased endlessly, Hortensia for being Barbadian, for singing when she spoke, for rounding words in a way that amused her classmates, for being dark; but mostly they spurned her for being a good designer, for the audacity of that.
‘I’m not ashamed. I just thought that would be the easiest way.’
‘To what?’
‘To give them something to muck about with.’
K’s strategy had puzzled Hortensia, who’d never even considered bringing a strategy with her to Brighton – perhaps a failure of her otherwise-robust imagination. On confirmation that she’d received the coveted British Council Art Scholarship (her teacher had practically browbeaten her into making an application), she’d celebrated with Zippy, enjoyed the proud gaze of her father, Kwittel, and endured a litany of cautions from her mother, Eda. It was really one cautionary remark repeated in various forms – Be careful. Eda, ever tightly wound to the possibility of coming troubles, predicting Armageddon, emboldened by the Bible, King James Version, whose first testament she had put to memory, with its smiting and endless tribulations. Hortensia had ignored her mother’s warnings, but soon, arriving unprepared for battle, regretted this. Regardless, she wrote simple letters home and received simple ones back. Eda’s shaky writing dominated the square pages. Hortensia wrote back in black, all-capital letters (she’d discovered a great capacity for penmanship), and told of a beach that wasn’t a beach, not the sea baths to which she was accustomed. Despite Eda’s repeated ‘Are you alrights?’, Hortensia left out stories of what she called ‘the freeze’. Hard stares from fellow students and lecturers alike; stares from people who looked through you, not at you; stares intent on disappearing you; and stares you fought by making yourself solid. People found it civilised to imitate the sound of a chimpanzee whenever they passed Hortensia or K in the corridors. They were not the first black students to ever attend Bailer’s and yet it seemed a riddle had to be solved each time a black person presented at the college. A boy once asked Hortensia how her brother was. I don’t have a brother, Hortensia replied. Oh, but you do, here – the golliwog on the Robertson strawberry-jam jar.