“My father is from West Africa.”
“So what are they for?” It is the husband asking.
“I don’t know.”
I return to my leopardesses and they move on to another part of the exhibition. I have drawn the waist of one leopardess too thick. Even in pencil, I cannot replicate the litheness the artist has rendered in ivory. By the time I have penciled in the whiskers the couple is gone. There is something domestic in the cats I have drawn, suburban tabbies not jungle creatures.
It is lunchtime and I venture outside to the main road. The shops are selling Union Jack kitsch: mugs, clothing, stuffed bears. There is a bunting of international flags on the Italian restaurant I choose. A bell goes off. A waiter approaches.
“Table for one, madam?”
I am ushered to a table for two and Robert’s place is cleared away, napkin, knife, and fork. The menu is placed before me. It is written in green flourishes, curling vines on white stone. I order pasta. I have brought Francis Aggrey’s diary with me. I bring him out. Lunch with my father.
He writes of meeting Blessing for the first time. She is unimpressed by her husband’s politicking. I like the sound of her. She seems the first practical person that Francis has met. Perhaps she will be the one to finally break Menelik’s hold over him.
Menelik has gone on a speaking tour of the country, attempting to set revolutionary fires in damp hedges and lanes. My father is left alone in the attic room. On some evenings, he hears my mother play the flute. I remember the mournful airs in minor keys. She tried to teach me but I hated the way spit bubbled through the notes and had to be drained after each piece.
I spoke with Bronwen for some length today before she went off to her noon shift. Her name means “the white one,” a fitting description. She is only eighteen and says she will not work in a shop forever. She plans to design and sell her own clothes on Bond Street. She has made the red dress, the one I admire.
My mother wanted to design clothes and sell them on Bond Street. I never knew. I did know the meaning of her name. My grandfather named her Bronwen and gave me the middle name Brangwen, which meant “pure and dark,” my mother’s opposite. There was a darkness that shone, he used to say, the gleam of an onyx, the luster of black marble.
Grandpa Owen was a kind landlord. He invited my father to a Sunday roast with Aunt Caryl and my mother. He included Francis briefly, perhaps dangerously, in their family.
I have dishonored myself. I chose to stay home this Friday, instead of joining Mr. Bain at the pub. Around 9 p.m., needing to relieve myself, I went down to the toilet. The door was unlocked and I found Bronwen sitting on the rim of the bathtub with her feet soaking in a bucket of water. She was wearing a dressing gown that stopped at her knees. She blushed.
“Sorry. I should have locked the door. I’ll be out now.”
And like an experienced seducer, I asked, “Might a massage help?”
Before she could reply, I had knelt and lifted her foot out of the bucket. It was small and slender, the length of my palm, the width of four fingers. I began. I have seen it done in Segu. First the arch is bent back and forth, then the heel squeezed, then the toes splayed, fingers pushing in and out of the gaps.
“Does it hurt?” I asked. She shook her head and so I took out the next foot. My hands slid to her leg. It was slim and strong, the muscles firm from walking miles of shop floor. I inched to her knee, wondering at my daring. There was a graze, a dark line not fully healed. I touched it with the tip of my tongue. The flesh was cool and salty, the taste of the sea. Black man cannibal. My hand crawled under her dressing gown. She was naked underneath. When I touched her part, she gasped.
For the first time, I looked in her face.
“Shall I stop?” I asked, suddenly unsure of myself.
“Yes,” she said. There were tears in her eyes. I withdrew my hand. Black man rapist. The evidence of my ministrations was already apparent. My fingers had left marks on her pale skin.
“I beg your pardon,” I said.
I heard a key turning in the front door and I fled. I have abused Mr. Bain’s trust. I have taken advantage of Caryl’s young sister. Me, a grown man of twenty-five. I will give my notice tomorrow and start looking for new accommodation.
She was only eighteen, I want to shout. Predatory is what you would call Francis today. I’d guessed already that he was “an older man,” but still, I had hoped the story of their romance would be less sordid, less entangled in the grey area of consent. I wished I could read my mother’s version of events.