“Of course,” he says, and puts down the uncorked bottle. “Please have a seat.” He seems wrong-footed by my directness.
I sit opposite him in an armchair with my hands crossed on my lap. There is a low table between us on which he sets my glass of water.
“Well, here we are. For a man my age to discover a daughter is a big shock. You were born the year after I left London, which would have made me twenty-six. A father at twenty-six and I didn’t know.”
His tone is affable, generous, like our last disastrous meeting never occurred.
“Why have you chosen to believe me?” I ask.
“I have certain means of discovering the truth.”
“What means?”
He weighs whether to speak.
“You drank from a glass when we last met. You used cutlery,” he says.
I am not surprised, even though I did not expect such subterfuge.
“You could just have told me you wanted a paternity test,” I say.
“It is done. What does it matter? I am your father, you are my child. We are reunited.”
Reunited: a pleasant gloss on this situation.
“My mother thought you would write,” I say. There are things I must know before I return to London. I will not miss my chance a second time.
“Come now. A postal service was not readily available to guerrilla fighters.”
“You saw Thomas Phiri in London after you became prime minister.”
He smiles at the mention of his old friend.
“You know my good friend Thomas? How is he?”
“He died. I met his wife, Blessing,” I say.
“I remember her. She did not like me much. A woman does not like anyone to be too close to her husband. That is a shame about Thomas’s death. He was a good friend to me. You should have seen us in those days, two fine men about town.”
He is sliding into more comfortable memories.
“My mother waited for you,” I say, pulling him back.
“I didn’t know she was pregnant.”
“What would you have done differently?”
It is a childish question, but I am not grown up, only older. Little Anna is the kernel; big Anna is mere flesh, easily bruised, easily pared away.
“I would not have let any child of mine be raised in that savage country where black men were treated like animals. I mean, I was spat at in public. On more than one occasion.”
“You told her you would come back,” I say, refusing to understand or absolve him.
“I loved your mother very dearly. She made me feel like a man, simply because she looked up to me. You can’t know what it was for a white woman to admire a black man in that time, not lust after him, nor treat him as a pet.”
“You make her sound like a salve for your ego.”
“Not that. She was a balm to my heart.”
I suddenly feel sorry for Kofi Adjei. He is an old man. He has his own stone, Francis Aggrey, who would not recognize the strange fruit that has grown around him. Kofi does not fill up his armchair as Francis once would have. He is not yet frail, but he will soon be.
“I could not return to that country as an ordinary black man,” he says, finally. “When I visited England as a prime minister, on the surface it appeared a different country from my student days. But, of course, it was the same, only that my new status shielded me. I would have liked for you to have that shield, Anna. Believe me.”
He is a politician, trained to convince. Yet, despite myself, I am moved by his words.
“Come,” he says. “Let us go outside.”
Sliding doors open into a well-lit garden. Flowering bushes line the gravel path. The air is lush with fragrance. A bird startles, rising out of a tree in a rustle of wings and leaves.
“We didn’t meet here the first time,” I say.
“The bungalow is where I conduct my business affairs. When I first became prime minister, it was my home, but my family outgrew it. I have four children, five including you. The architects of those houses did not expect colonial officials to keep families. Wives, perhaps, but not children.”
We stop to let a peacock strut past, cawing for its mate.
“I was sorry to hear of the death of your mother,” he says. “When we were in the bush fighting, I often thought back to those London days. They were like a dream. She was very important to me.”
Kofi’s steps make no sound on the grass. He walks like a creature hunting.
“There was a man in my first cabinet—Jim Hastings. He married a white wife, met her in London and brought her back after his studies. The other African wives never took to her. They were like chimpanzees, ostracizing the stranger. Once, at a dinner party, she spoke sharply to a servant. Of course, all the cabinet wives did the same in their own homes, but it became a racial incident. We all had fathers and uncles who had been boy to some white madam.”