it is the eve of Mark Thackeray's retirement from the working class London school where he has taught for the last 30 years. During his speech to the faculty and friends who have gathered to send him off with good wishes, he announces that he has taken a teaching position on Chicago's South Side. But Mark has another reason for wanting to go to the States--to find his first love, a woman he met over thirty years ago when he was a young man in Guyana....