It had come from nowhere, in my living room. How we got into the slave trade, I cannot now imagine, but I became furious with him for setting Ethiopia alongside countries that had been colonised by the European powers. The Ethiopian experience was different, I said. Not morally superior, but different. Our country—I called it that, for the first time since I stepped on to the dock at Calais—our country was not conquered, not even when it was occupied by the Fascists and Haile Selassie returned in 1941 at the head of an army. He raised the standard of the Lion of Judah and by the grace of God and the support of one Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill he took back what was always ours. What did Michael know, anyway, of what it meant to be a black man in a white country? Had he come here as a refugee? With literally nothing but the clothes on his back? (Well, in honesty, nor had I: I left my possessions in Addis Ababa, true enough, but much of my bank balance came with me, courtesy of the modern banking system and my international sales.) Had Michael been told by a jazz man, ten days after buying a small apartment in Soho, that he must never put bananas in the fruit bowl? He had not. No, he had not. I’d never told that story, but I told it then, and I made him sit and listen to every word with all of my parental authority.