permanent frown hooked into her face was not with Agnes. ‘I thought you had given up on your little communist meetings.’
‘No,’ said Agnes sniffily. ‘I’ve decided to persist. They need me.’
He was quiet a moment. ‘A letter came for you yesterday,’ he said. ‘Shall I read it to you?’
Her lips tightened like a drawstring. This was no Lorna. No one had applauded him for marrying this white woman. Sir Stewart had banished them. Ronald’s mother, under the sway of Lenshina’s cult, had refused to meet his ‘half-caste’ child. If they were his children – what had Agnes been up to here in Lusaka while he was away? She certainly never guessed what he had been up to in Edinburgh. Ronald didn’t know when she had met this Lionel fellow, or how far their little friendship went. He pulled the letter from his pocket and unfolded it.
‘“Dearest Eggnest,”’ he began, then looked up. ‘Egg. Nest?’
She nodded, blushes poxing her neck. He went on, trying not to smile at her discomfort.
‘“Dearest Eggnest. First, I want to thank you. Your presence has meant so much to us. Sadly, we have decided that it would be best if you no longer attended our meetings.”’
She inhaled sharply. Her red splotches seemed to bulge like eyes, glaring at him.
‘“Your material contributions have been invaluable. You may keep the books but please forward the tape recordings of the meetings – discretion is advisable, given the situation…”’
* * *
When Agnes was ousted from The Reds, she took to her bed. She ate honeytoast and tea and told tales to her belly. Once upon a time in a faraway land, there was a princess…Grace was the one who washed and dressed and fed little Carol, walked her to and from school. Between these tasks, Grace placed flannels on Agnes’s forehead and rubbed her ankles while they listened to the radio.
News of the mounting campus demonstrations came daily, announcers roundly denouncing The Reds’ protests against the UNZA administration and then against Kaunda. Three hundred students have blocked Great East Road! Hooligans! Is this what decent citizens pay student bursaries for? Today, the Ministry of Home Affairs arrested six foreign lecturers, including Lionel Heath. Serves them right for interfering in Zambian business!
Campus was shut for weeks. Ronald worked from home, grumbling about the inconvenience to his research. Agnes was unsympathetic. She still fantasised about being a member of The Reds. She would have visited Lionel in prison, secreted his letters out to publish in the Times of Zambia. She would have held hands with students as they marched down Great East Road. Like Mama Chikamoneka, she would have bared her swollen breasts and stomach, shaming the uniformed men making arrests.
One day in February of 1976, Grace was kneeling on the floor, rubbing Agnes’s ankles, when the radio remarked, almost in passing: ‘Today, it has been confirmed that the UNZA lecturer Dr Lionel Heath, his wife, and his two daughters have been deported back to the United Kingdom.’
Agnes gasped.
‘Madamu?’ Grace asked worriedly and dropped Agnes’s ankle.
For Ronald to divide Agnes from The Reds, from her only friends, was one thing. Even Lionel going to jail could be countenanced – forcing arrests was after all a standard practice in civil-disobedience campaigns. But to get the man ousted from the country? Ronald had betrayed her and trapped her at once. She could not confess to her hurt without confessing to her feelings.
‘Ba Aganess?’
‘It’s alright, I’m alright, Grace.’
He had tied her hands but she would take her revenge where she could.
‘I thought I hurt you doing this thing.’ Grace resumed wringing Agnes’s ankle.
‘No,’ said Agnes firmly, hand splayed over her belly. ‘It was just little Lionel kicking.’
First there’s the twinge, the harbinger of ache. You shiver, then suddenly feel faint. You’re hot, then cold, then both at once – sweating yet parched, bone-dry yet soaked, like water from a twice-smitten rock. Paroxysm is the technical term for what follows next: the grip and release of the ague. You grow shaky and fevered, your retinas whiten, delirium sets in with a vengeance.
You find yourself drowning alone in a sea. You grasp a boulder to stay above water. Three men in white robes say you cannot cross here, but then God tells the angels to save you. They cast a rope out and you pull yourself over to the other side of the sea. You enter a city, a splendid musumba, where the angels check the Book for your name. When they do not find it,