‘You worry too much. Everything will be fine.’

Stephen was not mollified. He couldn’t help feeling jealous of Mark. Craving reassurance, he pressed against her and ran his fingers lightly down the back of her neck.

‘I hope you’re right,’ he said.

She turned and wound her arms around him, murmuring, ‘You’re overthinking, as usual.’ He drew her onto the bed and thought was blotted out by the feel and taste of her, and by the sweetness coursing through his body.

13 Ginie, Rhodesia, 1950s

13

Ginie, Rhodesia, 1950s

While their hall for home crafts was being built, Ginie and Stephen got books from the library in Umtali on the history of Africa, and on comparative anthropology. Ginie read up on the current laws of Rhodesia, Acts of Parliament and the Reports of Commissions and sub-committees. ‘The Land Apportionment Act,’ she learned, was the cornerstone of Rhodesian policy; it allocated the best land to whites, while less than a third went to Africans and about a fifth was unassigned. Africans not needed for labour on white-owned lands were forcibly moved to squalid and overcrowded reserves, where the soil was inferior and the rainfall insufficient. These were called the Tribal Trust Lands.

‘The Native Affairs Act’ set up separate tribal councils for the administration of the reserves and advisory councils for Africans in urban areas, all under the umbrella of the Native Affairs Department, but under the ultimate authority of the Prime Minister. It was a shoddy device to side-track Africans asking for the right to sit in parliament.

Ginie was galvanised – shocked by what she was learning, but exhilarated as her brain expanded with new information and ideas.

The finished hall was a large, airy, brick structure, filled with long trestle tables and chairs. A wide and shady veranda ran the length of it, like an extra room, and they all sat out there on unbearably hot days. The women were given hand-operated sewing machines, looms, knitting needles and wool. Ginie demonstrated how to operate the machines and the different functions they made more efficient: adding pockets and buttonholes, using more than one colour at a time, and so on. She made specimens, stuck them on paper and left them around the room so that the women could refer to them afterwards. One afternoon Guthrie came to see the club and Ginie walked him around the hall, watching the members talking and laughing as they knitted. Some had their babies with them and there were toddlers leaning against their mothers’ legs, or playing on the floor.

They stopped beside Zandile, the cook’s wife, a beautiful and statuesque woman with flawlessly smooth skin, who was turning out a range of jackets and jumpers with beautifully finished pockets and buttonholes, all in vibrant colours. Ginie exclaimed over each piece.

‘I feel so at home with these ladies,’ she said, as they moved on.

‘Ginie, you can’t say that.’