pain and the pleasure, and the crying out, their voices like bells striking a rough harmony to announce and seal their union.
They were in the old shed behind the tennis lawn, surrounded by the smell of rusted tools. The wind shook the thin walls and whistled through the cracks in them. As they lay in that gusty, musty aftermath, Agnes asked Ronald to describe the room. He said the window was glowing green from the light coming through the trees outside, which made watery shadows on the walls. She asked him to describe her body. He spoke about density, which, because of his distinctive pronunciation, she mistook at first for destiny. But no, Ronald was speaking like the engineering student he was, about mass: how it felt when he lifted her thighs, how heavy her hair was despite its fineness. He analysed the bridge of her nose. He didn’t mention skin colour.
The funny thing was, Agnes couldn’t remember the look of black and white any more. When she concentrated on the words, all she felt was a vague sense of contrast, a drama of darkness and light. Why should colour mean so much? Oh, the slings and arrows! Agnes decided to loosen like the strings of a racket, to let the flung orbs get stuck, to grow around them. People would stare. Let them! She wouldn’t see their eyes anyway.
She thought of Althea Gibson. The black American with the power drives and the gangly reaches, the Negress who had triumphed at Wimbledon even though it had reached 39°C, who had kissed the Queen’s hand and sung jazz at the Astor. That was the future of race relations. Yes, Agnes had always been rather shallow, but as is often the case, this turned out to be rather an advantage when it came to love.
* * *
There was no way to climb the thorny wall that sprung up between Agnes and her parents when she told them, however. They didn’t even know about whom she was speaking at first.
‘Oh…delightful! An engagement! He…where did…?’ Carolyn sounded flustered.
‘Here, of course,’ said Agnes. ‘He’s very kind, as you know. Quite serious. Awfully witty.’
They were sitting in the conservatory, tea cooling in china cups. Agnes was lying on a bench, feigning a casual posture, a hand propping her head up. On the wrought-iron table, there was a breakfast spread – scones and blackcurrant jam, a jar of rustling cereal, a jug of fresh milk.
‘Ahem,’ George cleared his throat. ‘Agnes, darling, did you say you met here?’
‘Yes, your visitor, Papa. Here for the holidays? The engineering student.’
‘Roland?’ George asked, perplexed.
‘Who?’ asked Carolyn. ‘Goodness…not French, is he?’
‘Dear God, no!’ Agnes said automatically, then paused. ‘Well, he is…non…British.’ She breathed in the scent of her mother’s perfume and the sugary tea and the roses unwinding from their buds. ‘It is Papa’s visitor,’ she said. ‘But his name is Ronald. And we’re in love.’
‘Hmm…hrm?’ George murmured like a record that has stopped but has yet to be turned.
‘Technically, you’re from there, too, Mummy. Northern Rhodesia. Lovely place, apparently. Didn’t Grandpa Percy know Ronald’s sponsor, Sir Stewart?’
‘Christ!’ Carolyn sputtered. ‘Rhodesia…dear child…You have no…’
‘I know you never talk about it – you barely lived there – but Grandpa Percy told me stories when he visited. When I was a girl.’ Agnes smiled. ‘About the hotel and the Italian man they put up on the mantel to sing like a bird and the great waterfall, one of the seven wonders…’
‘Victoria Falls, hmm,’ George said distractedly.
‘George!’ Carolyn admonished.
‘But Papa, you married a schoolteacher!’ Agnes said. ‘You always said love is blind!’
‘Not that blind,’ George murmured with an awkward laugh.
Agnes hung her head, trying not to weep. Her parents’ silence swelled and reddened and seemed to suppurate like a wound. Finally, in a voice Agnes had never heard before – gapless, as if no longer needing to accommodate her husband or as if they now spoke as one – her mother issued their final words on the matter:
‘You have disgraced us. Your grandfather would roll in his grave. You had better pray that this Kaffir has not yet laid a finger on you. Because if he has, I promise you, he will hang.’
1963
They got on a ship and sailed away. It wasn’t easy. Ronald was largely unfamiliar with British bureaucracy; Agnes could barely manage a meal on her own, much less a voyage to Africa. They found an unlikely ally in Mrs Wainscroft, who was more delighted than dismayed by all the drama. ‘Your