He walked away to greet his new niece. I stood for a long time at the window staring at nothing, while I heard snatches of words and phrases from the quarrel. And these were mingled with weeping. Then I turned from the window. Looking into the little mirror on the wall, I was not surprised to see my whole face bathed in unconscious tears. I did not feel like going to bed. I did not feel like doing anything at all. I toyed with the idea of going to see Maami Ama and then finally decided against it. I could not bear to face her; at least, not yet. So I sat down thinking about him. I went over the most presumptuous daydreams I had indulged in on his account. ‘I would have taken him away with me in spite of his mother’s protests.’ She was just being absurd. ‘The child is a boy, and sooner or later, she must learn to live without him. The highest class here is Primary Six and when I am going away, I will take him. I will give him a grammar education. Perhaps, who knows, one day he may win a scholarship to the university.’ In my daydreams, I had never determined what career he would have followed, but he would be famous, that was certain. Devastatingly handsome, he would be the idol of women and the envy of every man. He would visit Britain, America and all those countries we have heard so much about. He would see all the seven wonders of the world. ‘Maami shall be happy in the end,’ I had told myself. ‘People will flock to see the mother of such an illustrious man. Although she has not had many children, she will be surrounded by her grandchildren. Of course, away from the village.’ In all these reveries his father never had a place, but there was I, and there was Maami Ama, and there was his father, and he, that bone of contention, was lost to all three. I saw the highest castles I had built for him come tumbling down, noiselessly and swiftly.

He was buried at four o’clock. I had taken the schoolchildren to where he lay in state. When his different relatives saw the little uniformed figure they all forgot their differences and burst into loud lamentations. ‘Chicha, O Chicha, what shall I do now that Kwesi is dead?’ His grandmother addressed me. ‘Kwesi, my Beauty, Kwesi my Master, Kwesi-my-own-Kwesi,’ one aunt was chanting, ‘Father Death has done me an ill turn.’

‘Chicha,’ the grandmother continued, ‘my washing days are over, for who will give me water? My eating days are over, for who will give me food?’ I stood there, saying nothing. I had let the children sing ‘Saviour Blessed Saviour’. And we had gone to the cemetery with him.