Agnes, diving into the jumble at the bottom of the wardrobe, feeling for the mules with the block heel and the bow over the toes. She sat on the bed so Grace could strap them onto her feet with fingers still sticky from floor polish. Grace was perfunctory with Agnes’s body and matter-of-fact about her blindness. In this sense, at least, she was preferable to Mr Sakala, who served Agnes’s meals cut into child-sized bites and never failed to remind her that his wife was praying for the return of her sight.
‘Do not forget the ling, Madamu,’ said Grace, placing the cold band in Agnes’s palm.
The Marriage Ordinance had finally been changed to allow Africans to marry, which meant that Agnes could marry her African, Ronald. They hadn’t bothered with a church ceremony, but he had brought home a licence and a ring – copper with a malachite stone, he’d said.
Agnes slid it on and stood. Her heart sank. Talking to Grace was one thing. Talking to Ronald’s sophisticated friends was another. There would be no hiding behind her Englishness.
‘Come with me?’ she begged, reaching for Grace’s hand.
Grace squeezed it peremptorily and let it drop. ‘Ah no, Madamu, you must go, you.’
* * *
Agnes felt her way out of the bedroom, Grace’s scorn – or was it pity? – washing up her back. She moved slowly towards the sitting room, her hand slipping from the wall every so often to adjust her skirt. When she reached the corner, she paused, nerves twinkling in her stomach. How absurd it was! This trial of being a wife to a man. The flat pat of Ronald’s step approached.
‘Darling.’ He kissed her cheek. He took her elbow and escorted her into the sitting room.
‘This young man is Rick,’ he said, directing her attention to the right.
‘How d’you do?’ Agnes reached for the proffered hand and tried to curtsy the Zambian way Ronald had taught her – her left hand cupping her right elbow, both knees bending a little.
‘No, no,’ came a British voice. ‘We’re equals here! None of this grovelling business.’
‘And this is Phil, my colleague,’ Ronald redirected her attention to the left. Feeling admonished, Agnes reached out and shook this hand firmly, no curtsying this time.
‘Hm? Ronald,’ said Phil. ‘Is this woman of yours a chair that her legs do not bend?’
‘Philemon is correct,’ came a booming voice. This was apparently Mercy, the big woman Agnes had heard from the bedroom. ‘She must show rispect. She must even go bare-chested to the parents!’
‘And last but not least is Sue,’ said Ronald.
‘My name is Masuzio,’ a lovely contralto voice objected in a singsong.
‘Ah! Imwe!’ Ronald exclaimed. ‘We have become Africanised?’
‘Why should I use a nickname? Just because the British cannot pronounce my name?’
Agnes swallowed. ‘So nice to meet you,’ she said, ‘Mazoozio.’
‘Good effort!’ Masuzio laughed. ‘Top marks.’
Agnes sat, trying to keep track of the names attached to the four voices: Phil and Mercy, Rick and Sue – no, Masuzio. They were all African except for Rick, a British researcher. Ronald had told her last night how Rick and Masuzio had met. Masuzio, fresh out of secondary school, had been leaning against a wall at the boma in Chinsali, wearing a miniskirt. Rick had been riding his bicycle through town, wearing shorts. They had both looked at each other and thought: Nice legs! Agnes had been scandalised by this story until Ronald reminded her that he had first seen her in a tennis skirt.
‘Cheers!’ he said now, placing a drink in her hand. ‘To Agnes!’
Agnes smiled bravely and held her glass in front of her, waiting for the clinks to come.
‘So,’ Mercy spoke in the loud voice of someone who mistakes blindness for deafness. ‘Did you bare your breasts to your mother-in-law before the wedding?’
Agnes choked on her gin and tonic.
‘Oh, for crying out loud, Mercy,’ Rick muttered.
Agnes cleared her throat. ‘I haven’t met Ronald’s parents,’ she said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
There was an awkward silence. Agnes felt as if she were floating in a chilly sea of sweat.
‘Well, when you do,’ said Mercy, ‘and you will, the custom is to take off your shirt—’
‘Must we perpetuate these primitivities?’ Masuzio cut in.
‘Ah, you, Sue!’ Mercy groused. ‘To bare the breasts is not primitive. It is even political! Mama Chikamoneka bared her breasts to the colonial secretary and she is a heroine!’
Agnes had heard about this on the radio. In 1960, the British colonial secretary, Ian Macleod, had flown in for a state visit and found a