Sankofa(29)

“Very well, thank you. Follow me, please.”

In the corridors, we passed other carers dressed in pale blue scrubs. I recognized faces: Daniel from Uganda, who was studying to become an accountant; Moses from South Africa, who filled out his scrubs like a body builder.

“Where’s Tina?” I asked.

“She went back to Bulgaria.”

Tina had a masters in communication. She also had three teenage sons who ate like horses.

Aunty Caryl’s door was shut. Maria knocked but didn’t wait for a response.

“Hello, love. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

She was looking at Maria.

“All right, Mrs. Graham. I’ll leave the two of you for half an hour. I think that’s all she can take today.”

I stood at the foot of Aunt Caryl’s single bed. Her hair was freshly cut and dyed the brick red it had always been. When they let it go grey, her reflection shocked her. There was a card on the windowsill from her birthday two months ago. They remembered the details. The Bethel Home for the Elderly was better than most. There was no smell of neglect, no fog of urine.

I had not visited since my mother’s death. The bereavement, the separation from Robert, monitoring Rose’s eating: it was all too overwhelming. I knew Aunt Caryl was no longer capable of missing me, yet I still felt guilt.

“Who’s that?” she said.

“It’s Anna, Aunt Caryl.”

“Have you come to give me the paper?”

“No. I just came to see you.”

“I’m fine. You can go now unless there’s something special you want to tell me.”

“I’m going to see Francis.”

“About time. I always told your mother to tell you about him. I didn’t mind her having my leftovers. I had enough attention from the boys back then. If you press that button someone will come and pour you a cup of tea.”

“I’m all right, thank you.”

“You don’t want any tea?”

“No, thanks.”

“Then you can fuck off.” When I was younger, Aunt Caryl was the only one who understood that I was a black child living with a white family. My mother and grandfather’s denial was farcical, almost sinister.

“You’re Welsh,” my mother would say, when I came home with grit in my hair.

“There’ve been Bains in and around the Wye Valley for generations,” my grandfather would add.

Aunt Caryl took me to the Notting Hill Carnival when I was six. She held my hand as we moved through the throng of black people, more black people than I had ever seen in my life.

“Are we in Africa?” I asked.

“Not quite, love.”

There was music, feathers, sequins, drumming. There were black women with white gauze wings, gold paste crowns, mirrors and face paint, floats and thrones, transformed for a day into carnival kings and queens before they sank back to earth at midnight. The crowd responded to the rhythm, swaying, bending, stamping, except the two of us, who stood as still as oak trees in the wind.

That was also the year of a riot at the carnival. Small and contained, so we only saw it on the news when we got home, but neither my mother nor Grandpa Owen thought it appropriate for a child after that. I don’t know why I never went as an adult. I felt I had to go with someone, perhaps, and it didn’t seem Robert’s thing.

Aunt Caryl was growing restless now. Her bottom lip appeared from and disappeared into her mouth. Her eyes darted around the room, resting on everything but me. I stepped back from the bed and sat on the armchair in the corner.

“Do you remember Francis?”

“Yes. The butcher’s boy,” she said.

“Not that Francis. Francis Aggrey?”

“I’d have gone to Africa if I’d been the one who was pregnant.”

Her moments of lucidity were brief, flighty as a sparrow perching.

“Did he know about me?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.

“About who, love?”

“Did Francis Aggrey know Bronwen had a baby?”

“I’ve never met a Bronwen in my life. Pretty name, though.”

The moment was gone. Her mind had flitted off into confusion again.

“I found his diary.” I said.

“Whose diary?”

“Francis’s.”

“That must have been a surprise.”

“I can read you a passage.”

“Go on, then.”

I picked a passage that might jolt her.


“I have walked out a few times with Caryl. Thomas congratulates me for finally finding an obroni woman. He says it is about time I know that a woman’s secret place tastes the same, no matter what color hair surrounds it. I do not believe all Thomas’s tales of conquest. One man cannot have such stamina, but he undoubtedly has an effect on obroni women. He is bold with them, leaning close when he talks, touching them lightly for emphasis. They appear receptive. Without immodesty, I am taller than Thomas and have often been called handsome, whereas even the kindest would not describe Thomas in that way. I, too, might have such an effect if I wished, but I am suspicious of obroni women. I think it is not attraction but curiosity that makes them follow Thomas.

On the MV Aureole to England, a district officer’s wife stumbled against me in a deserted passage. I steadied her, and she must have taken this as encouragement for she slid her hand down my trousers like a common wharf whore. We remained in this position for a few moments. There was alcohol on her breath and the fug of her sweat repelled me, but I am a curious man. I kissed her, my first obroni kiss, and her tongue barreled past my teeth, filling my mouth with the taste of rum. ‘Let me see,’ she said dragging at my belt. ‘I want to see what size it is on a nigger.’