an official capacity as a former leader of the first African political party. Madam had decided to come to the celebrations alone – the workers had the day off and Ronald had abruptly left for the village without her.
‘He has been worried about his parents ever since they joined the Lumpa Church.’
Grace was so gripped by this – the bwana’s family followed that madwoman? – that she forgot herself and started asking questions. Agnes and Grace had been listening to the news of this rebellion on the radio for the last few months, but they had never discussed it. A woman named Alice Lenshina had started a religious cult. Her followers, thousands of them, had built their own settlements and refused to pay taxes, showing allegiance to neither the colonial government nor Kaunda’s party. As soon as he had won the elections, Kaunda had sent in troops to quash the Lumpa Church rebellion. Last July, the confrontation had turned deadly – reports said that at least 1,000 of Lenshina’s people had been gunned down.
‘Mm, but I think it is good,’ Grace opined. ‘You must show the mighty of the lion. Kaunda is a proper leader! These Lumpa-Lumpa are just causing mischiffs!’
‘Yes, I suppose. But it does seem frightful to bring in guns so soon.’
‘Oh, was the bwana’s family hurt in these shootings?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Agnes, rubbing her sore wrist. ‘Ronald has kept it very private.’ She couldn’t answer Grace’s personal questions, so she offered some vague opinions about the political situation. Grace responded in kind. Fireworks stunned the sky smoky behind the two new Zambians as they walked, chatting back and forth, working at about the same level of ignorance, but with a near equal measure of interest. They had walked almost two miles before they remembered to flag down a car.
* * *
This was the start of a new relationship between Agnes and Grace. It was more like family than friendship, forged through proximity and dependence rather than affinity. It coincided with the opening of a chasm in Agnes’s marriage. Ronald had become the Incredible Invisible Husband. At first he was away for weeks at a time, travelling north to tend to his mother, who refused to leave the Lumpa even after losing two children and a husband to the massacre in ’64. Then he took a staff development fellowship to become a lecturer at the newly minted University of Zambia. This meant three years in Scotland to finish his degree. Ronald insisted Agnes stay behind in Lusaka. No need to uproot her life again – besides, it wasn’t like they could stay with her family.
When Ronald declared that he was staying for two more years in Edinburgh to finish his PhD, Agnes was bewildered. Her husband had drifted into some realm that she could no longer access. On his infrequent trips home to Lusaka, they still made love – Agnes sniffing fervently, hunting the scent of other women and desperate for his own – but they barely spoke. And after a week, he’d be off again, to collect samples in the field or to dig in the archives or to present his findings to his dissertation committee in Edinburgh.
Grace tended to Agnes in his absence. Assuming her Madam would want to be around people like her, Grace carted her off to the places where all the expats congregated in Lusaka: the Ridgeway Hotel, the Polo Club, the Tennis Club. The colour bar had been banned but pockets of white life remained, places where money made the difference that the law no longer did. Agnes didn’t question Grace’s choices. She thought this was just what one did in Lusaka. As long as her aide was with her, she was fine. Grace was a wet blanket, but she was a blanket nonetheless.
There was near-constant physical contact between the two women, especially after Agnes got pregnant during one of Ronald’s brief visits home. She had dire morning sickness and Grace spent weeks guiding her Madam from bedroom to bathroom and back, wiping up the splatter when she missed the bowl.
‘I’m too old for this,’ Agnes moaned between gushes. She was not quite thirty.
‘No, no,’ Grace clucked. ‘My aunty, she even had a baby when she was forty-sickisty!’
Agnes spat miserably. ‘That is a lie, Grace.’
‘Bwana, he will come back soon.’
But Ronald did not come back to Lusaka when Agnes went into labour. And so in May of 1972, Agnes gave birth in the maternity ward at the University Teaching Hospital with