“Anna. I’ll get my bag.”
My mother liked Robert. He was tall. He spoke like a BBC announcer. She was a little awed by these shallow trappings. “You’ve done well for yourself, Anna,” she said when she saw my engagement ring. I pestered her for weeks after. What exactly did she mean? She turned on me in a rare show of spirit and said, “Stop trying to turn me into a women’s activist.”
The only thing Aunt Caryl asked was “What’s he like in bed?”
How much would I have made of my life if we’d never met? I wasn’t suited to architecture: the hours were too long, the opportunities to express myself too few. Only a precious few rose high enough to stamp their point of view on a building. The rest of us were sketch-drawing props to someone else’s grand vision.
I look up and see I have gone past my stop. I press the bell and walk home, thinking now of my last words to the lawyer. Somewhere in the world, Francis Aggrey may be alive, may have only a few months to live, may be dead. To find out, I must go to Bamana, and to go to Bamana I need money.
The fastest route is to either sell my mother’s flat or divorce Robert. The monthly allowance he gives me is not enough to fund a trip. I was in a foolish financial position for a woman my age. Rose has more money than me.
When I got home, my eyes rested on a jade Buddha cross-legged in the hallway, brought back from Thailand in my hand luggage. It must be worth something. Perhaps I would end up auctioning the contents of my house to fund a trip to Bamana.
4
The next day I continue with Francis Aggrey’s diary. His voice is familiar to me now—his dry wit, his flashes of anger, the pride that keeps him aloof despite his longing to make friends. He moved through London with this rich inner life hidden from all who passed him and concluded he was just another wog.
He writes of his parting with Aunt Caryl. I am relieved that there is no overlap with my mother, who is yet to make an appearance.
As for Francis and my aunt, he concludes that there is no spark between them. I am not surprised. The men in Aunt Caryl’s life were transient, migratory birds that shed a few feathers in their passing. She was the opposite of my mother. She loved change. I imagine that Francis had been something new that fast grew old.
Menelik has given me another pamphlet about the diamonds in D.C. There is a small white settler population in Mion, which owns all the mines, and the indigenous Ba people are forced into their labor, the pamphlet says. Little is heard of their plight. The Ba were the last to come into contact with Europeans and only a handful are educated. They have few spokespersons and their chiefs are in the pay of the mine owners. I will go to Mion one day and see for myself.
There are a few half sentences, fragments of thoughts.
Pan-Africanism or socialism?
Negro advancement in the twentieth century cannot be judged on . . .
We face neither east nor west.
My exams are in two weeks. I am buried in the library most days, cramming. I have not been to Menelik’s flat.
Perhaps Francis’s exams will break Menelik’s hold over him. I was always good at exams. I could learn things and unlearn them once the test was over. It’s how I got into grammar school.
My first exam is tomorrow. I have prayed to Christ and sprinkled some gin on my carpet for Bimba because I am a fisherman’s son.
The last paper is done and I am free for a month. I would like to travel to Wales, or perhaps even Scotland, but as always I am low on funds. There are no jobs going for black men of my education, only work as diggers and bellboys, cringing for tips from some white patron or another.
It was a fine day and I wandered into Hyde Park. Menelik was at Speakers’ Corner, denouncing imperialism. A small crowd had gathered. He paces when he speaks, like an animal in a tight cage. He talks in threes: Debt, Disease, and Death to imperialism. The English shuffled their feet and laughed. They do not take him seriously. I went back to his flat afterwards. We discussed socialism in Ghana with the newest member of our circle, Adrian Bennett. Bennett is a young lecturer at the LSE. He is the first obroni man I have seen in Menelik’s flat. He gave me another book. This time on ancient African kingdoms. It is the size of a dictionary. I don’t know when I shall have time to read it.
My dislike for Menelik increases. He seems both dangerous and charismatic, a personality to attract a vulnerable and lonely young man like Francis.
In a week’s time I will be homeless. As I write this, Blessing is on her way to London in a ship and she will arrive in seven days. She says Thomas is taking too long to be called to the bar and she is tired of playing the abandoned wife in Salisbury. She has been saving the money Thomas sends home from the articles he writes for the press here sometimes. “She was meant to buy dresses with that,” he said to me with his head in his hands.