“My mother wasn’t like that.”
“I was three years working and fighting and another five in a jail cell. I couldn’t expect a young woman like her to wait.”
“She never married. It’s not so easy with a black child.”
He ignores this. “What of you? Do you have a family?”
“I have a daughter,” I say.
“Which means I also have another grandchild. May I see a photograph?”
I show him a picture of Rose on my phone.
“She is white?”
“Her father is white.”
“She has your mother’s eyes.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about your childhood.”
We walk in slow laps around the garden, Kofi’s stride matching mine.
“I grew up in Grandpa Owen’s house. The same one you lodged in. There was always a ‘paying guest,’ as he called it, in that top room—to help with bills. But we only took on women. No men.”
“Because of me?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. Aunt Caryl would visit often. My mother worked as a sales assistant. Grandpa Owen was retired and could watch me after school, teach me a few Welsh phrases. Things were fine until he died when I was eight. We couldn’t keep up with the rent without his pension. We moved into council housing,” I say, passing over the year we lived with Aunt Caryl when she and my mother argued over her “unsuitable callers.”
“And what was that like?” Kofi asks.
“It wasn’t terrible. I had enough to eat. The heating worked most of the time. There were a few African families on our block. They showed me how to manage my hair. And then I got into grammar school. That’s when the great drift began.”
“What do you mean?”
“From my mother. I traveled out of her life, went on to university, went to places she’d never dreamed of, and I saw a different way of being. I joined the Afro-Caribbean Society at university.”
“Sounds like the African Student Union of my days.”
“Yes, but less politics. We did some marches around Free Mandela, but we really were there for a good time, potluck parties and so on. They used to make fun of me. Anna White. That’s what they called me.”
“But you are not white.”
“Yes, but they said I talked like a white person, thought like one, and, worst of all, I danced white.” Ostracize the stranger. The memory still stings.
Whenever the path narrows Kofi gestures for me to go first. Perhaps these were the manners my mother had fallen in love with.
“What did you study?” he asks
“Architecture. I worked for a year, met my husband in that time, and then never really finished. I didn’t do the masters. Tried to be an artist for a while. That didn’t work either.”
“One of my daughters is an artist. Benita. Her work is popular in Sweden.”
“Well, one of us succeeded,” I say. “You don’t need to tell me about your childhood. I’ve read about it.”
His face is a study in neutrality.
“You must have read other things, other less-flattering things.”
“I have.”
“Then you must remember that there are two sides to every story,” he says. “Thank you for returning the diary. It has been interesting to be reacquainted with my young self. Much has changed. Much has remained the same.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever get the chance to meet you when I read it. I didn’t even know you were alive,” I say.
“Would you have abstained, if you knew? To respect my privacy?”
I think for a moment. “No,” I say.
“Neither would I.”
We pause outside the sliding doors that lead into the living room. We have spoken with frankness, a frankness I never had with my mother, my daughter, not even with Robert. Kofi knows what it is like to be an ordinary black person in England. We are akin in that regard.
“It’s time for you to be getting back to your hotel. I trust the suite is to your comfort,” he says.
“Yes, thank you. Could I have the diary back, please? It was your gift to my mother.”
“I meant the gift to be temporary. But soon, perhaps, when I finish reading it.”
The drive back to the Palace Hotel was short. In my room I ordered a meal of rice, chicken, salad, and chocolate cake. When it arrived I had a small feast.
22
My phone rang at five o’clock the next morning.
“Good morning, Anna. I’m visiting my country home for a few days. Would you care to join me?”