Never was a man so fast deflated.”
“You should never say that word, Anna.”
“Which word?”
“Rhymes with ‘bigger.’”
We smiled and for a moment she was Aunt Caryl again.
“Go on. What else did he say about me?”
Francis Aggrey’s words were almost mystical in their power. For a few minutes they had pulled my aunt back from senility.
“Caryl and I have chosen to remain friends. There is no spark between us and I am uncomfortable with her in public. Whenever she reaches for my hand, I wonder if I am a romantic extension of the political work she does in Menelik’s flat. A man called her a nigger lover in the street. ‘And what if I am,’ she replied. I do not wish that my person be used as a statement for racial equality. We never slept together: a black mark against me, Thomas says. He finds my objections absurd. ‘Nobody’s saying marry a white woman. Just find out what they’re hiding under those wide skirts.’ Thomas himself is married. His wife, Blessing, is in Rhodesia. What would she think of his escapades? ‘I’m a man,’ he said. ‘No woman can chain me.’”
“That’s a nice story. Please pass me my knitting.”
“Do you remember this?” I asked.
“My knitting.”
It was too early to tell what she what she was making out of the ball of green wool that lay on her dressing table. When she got to the end, a carer would unravel it and she would start again. It was cruelly efficient.
“Why won’t you pass me my knitting? It’s just there.”
I didn’t know where Maria had kept the needles, and she wasn’t allowed to knit unsupervised. She had poked herself in the eye once.
“I think you’re very unkind. I want you to leave now.”
“Don’t you want to hear any more?” I asked.
“Just leave.”
I sang to her.
“Huna blentyn ar fy mynwes, Clyd a chynnes ydyw hon.”
The first few lines of “Suo Gan” could always quiet her. When Maria came back, she had fallen asleep.
“Poor dear,” she said.
“How is she? I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long. We had a family bereavement. My mother died suddenly.”
“Sorry to hear that, Mrs. Graham. She’s been well. Just some days she wakes up and doesn’t want to get out of bed. I don’t blame her. I feel like that sometimes.”
There were red scratches on Maria’s arm. Carers mopped up pee and wiped anuses. They gave showers, trimmed nose hairs, clipped fingernails, endured the shit pay. And for this, they were hit and spat on by some of their charges, pinched and groped, called niggers and monkeys and chinks. I had complained to the manager, a white male overseer whose fingernails were too long.
“Our residents come from a time when the use of such language was common. We regularly caution them about offensive words, but they are old. They forget.”
“Thank you so much for everything, Maria.”
“No problem. So, see you in a few weeks.”
“I’m traveling soon, but once I get back I’ll come again.”
She led me out to the visitors’ car park.
“Safe travels.”
15
The Bamana High Commission was close to Trafalgar Square. Tourists swarmed the area, holding maps and asking for directions. There were a few restaurants with maroon awnings and dim interiors. Francis Aggrey would have been barred from such places. To place the national embassy here was to offer an expensive challenge.
The building was grand. A Bamanaian flag—red, white, and blue with a black star in the middle—hung above the entrance. There was a queue winding around the corner, cordoned off by tape. I joined the tail end of the snake. A man in a suit approached and gave me a ticket.
“You are number twenty-five.”
“No, I’ve told you, sir,” the woman in front of me said, “my sister and her three children are coming. Four of them in total. So the person behind me is number twenty-nine.”
“I’ve already torn it.”
“Then please tear for me twenty-six to thirty.”
“I can’t tear for people I have not seen.”
A newcomer joined the queue. The official ripped out a new ticket.
“You are number twenty-six,” he said.
“Ei. Did you hear what I told you about my sister? I’m talking to you.”
The official returned to the front of the queue.
“Bedlam,” the newcomer said to me. His blond hair was cut to fall around his forehead and ears. It was a boyish style for someone going grey.