As he walked alongside men whose boots had been filled with sand or caked in mud or frozen hard by snow, men bent double by the things they carried, men who wished they had been assigned to Burma where the real fighting – with rifles – was, or to Durban, where they could at least escort Italian prisoners of war, Spokes knew he had to tread lightly. This was because he was the only man in the entire history of his country, perhaps in the entire history of the world, whose grandfather and father had both been hanged by the neck until they were dead. This rather weighty inheritance not only made him a rare and unique man; it also made him realise that he needed to cultivate a tenable relationship with the British.

By joining the war, Spokes felt certain that the promised land would make him something that his grandfather and his father had never had the chance to become: a man with a future. So, as men around him were struck by bullets against which they could not adequately defend themselves, or were blown apart by landmines that they had previously carried on their backs, this is what Spokes held on to: a future.

Spokes, and others who had survived the war, had returned home in 1946, to much fanfare and a victory parade as their regimental song, ‘Sweet Banana’, blasted from the army band on the stand, and confetti and ticker tape filled the air. There were many sensations to feel – pride was one of them. There were many things to believe – that they were heroes was one of them. There were many things to hope for – equality was one of them. A year after the parade, Spokes found himself standing in the long-anticipated future, waiting.

It was while he was waiting in that future that he saw something that he never thought he would see on Lobengula Street: a book. Not a scrolled-up newspaper placed in the pit of an arm, not a neatly folded pamphlet placed in a pocket, but a book – leather-bound and surprisingly new – held in a pair of brown hands with long, tapered fingers and delicate wrists. Books belonged in libraries where one could only touch them once one had donned a pair of white gloves, so what was this particular book doing in such beautiful brown hands, and on Lobengula Street of all places?

Spokes moved closer to the book and its owner until he could easily make out its title: Pride and Prejudice. Once he read the title, he became fully aware of his surroundings, and was shocked to find himself sitting in a bus. Somehow, as he followed those beautiful brown hands carrying the leather-bound book, he had managed to board a bus, pay the conductor and choose a seat, without his being aware of doing any of these things. The reason he could see the book’s title so clearly was because he was now sitting adjacent to the beautiful brown hands.