He put down the cup. He was not sitting — no chairs in a place like that — but he stood away from the ledge, the pillar, he took a step, drawn up, as if he rose from a table.
She had slid round and off her stool in one easy movement and was coming to him.
— Hul-lo. We haven’t seen you for such a long time. Mummy was saying only yesterday. And someone said you were in Japan or Brazil or somewhere. —
— No. Not at the moment. As you see —
They laughed, and without meaning to he actually opened his hands as if to display — one of the half-dozen well-cut summer suits, the edges of the trousers giving him away by just a hairline of grass-stained wet where they hung at the right length over his shoes.
— What’re you doing here? — So early, in our coffee bar, the smile suggested, not unwelcomingly.
— Thirsty. And what about you? Why aren’t you at school? Or am I being insulting — you’ve left school, that’s it? You’re a lady of leisure. -
— Oh ho. Am I! Slaving away. I’m at art school. I have to get up at quarter-to-six to catch the bus every morning. -
— Why doesn’t Dad buy you a car? —
— I know. It’s mean. — She was laughing as if this were the wittiest conversation of her life.
— I’ll have to talk to him about that. —
— I just wish you would. You tell him. -
— A nice little sports car. What would you like? A Jag? A Triumph? Something with wire wheels? —
She pulled a face that made white dents in her firm pink-brown flesh. — I’ll take anything. Any old jalopy. And what’s Terry doing? I suppose he’s got a car, lucky thing. -
— Not so lucky. Writing matric at the moment. Still incarcerated at school. -
— Good. Good — she said, vaguely.
There was a pause; the espresso machine made a gargling, hawking racket at which he raised his eyebrows and she laughed again, the habituée.
— But this coffee’s wonderful. My second round. Will you have one with me? —
— I know. It’s great. I’ve just got mine. Wait I’ll fetch it. — With a turn of the long waist, she was off and back again, pushing through her friends or at least contemporaries. He had guarded the ledge against the intrusion of anyone else who might approach with wobbling cup. The two of them leant over their coffee a moment, breathing it in. — You don’t smoke, do you? I don’t have to incur parental wrath by offering you one of these? —
She shook her head. — You’ve always smoked that kind. I used to know you’d come when I smelt that smell in the house. —
He blew away the cloud that in the close atmosphere made a curly nimbus round her hair. He was obliged to ask: — And how’s your mother? I’ve been away such a lot —
— Oh fine. We had a bit of a hassle over my flunking out before matric. You can’t imagine. Dad was all right but she was difficult. She wanted me to go to a finishing school in Switzerland… no thanks —
— If you go to Switzerland it’ll be to ski. —
— Exactly. —
— You’re enjoying this art school of yours? Have you any talent? —
— I don’t know. I don’t suppose I’ll ever do anything inspired. But it’s fun. -
— Specially the part that’s spent in places like this, mmh? —
— If I’d still been in that bloody school, do you know where I’d be now? At prayers! —
— So it’s gossip and romances and slipping off to drink espresso and go to the pictures? —
— Of course. You know it all! —
— Lucky thing. —
She smiled debunkingly at his use of her idiom. - What stops you? You can just walk out of your office and go to a movie if you feel like it? Why not? Daddy always groans as if he were in chains in that big plush office of his — I think you people make it all up. Why can’t you just say, I’m going to a movie this afternoon? If you feel like it? —
— Will you play hookey with me? What about something called Trinity — Trinity Was Here —
— Oh you mean Trinity Is Still My Name —
— I hear it’s a good blood-and-thunder Western –
— I’ve seen it. Not bad. —
— How many cinemas have you been to this week, mmh? —
She lowered her voice to her mother’s pitch. — I don’t think there’s a show in town I haven’t seen. Isn’t that awful. And some are such trash. It’s just a game, to us. We’ll get sick of it in time. I suppose so. — You don’t really feel like it, or you would just walk out. —
— That’s so. —
— There’re other things though, I mean that you really want to do, perhaps…? —
— Sometimes. —
A thin blonde with hunched shoulders attracted her attention and pointed at a huge wristwatch.
She was still so young she did not know how to take leave. She hitched her bag like a navvy. — Well, are we going to see you and Terry at Plettenberg Bay? We’re going down next week — Daddy’ll follow, he’s got a meeting or something. —
— Terry’s off to America to see his mum. —
— But you? —
He put money down beside the cup and the three walked out together. They had to make their way through people entering, jostling; she didn’t introduce her friend, didn’t remember she had had no answer. — Fine. I’ll tell Mummy —
His smiling gesture of correction, protest, uncommitted denial she — already a few yards off, accustomed to the easy uncertainty of her own plans — took laughing, miming the business of not having quite heard or understood. — What? What? You’ll be around, then — okay — lovely —
The newspaper that was placed folded on his desk each morning usually went straight into the basket. Today he had not already read it in bed in his flat. Iron ore and manganese were steady; copper down a few points. He started near the back, at the financial pages, and worked his way to the front, where there was a report of yet another scandal in the business world — this time a big construction firm in trouble. No one he knew personally seemed directly involved, but he made a note to speak to his broker about some stock he held in a company subsidiary to the firm. He had bought because he’d been tipped off the company was in line for government contracts for the Sishen-Saldanha railway, if that ever came to anything.
He had lunch with someone out from Bethlehem Steel and an old friend, now busy negotiating royalties for Platinum Holdings with the native chiefs in whose Bantustan the mine was, on the one hand, and the General Motors people who wanted the platinum for anti-pollution exhaust devices, on the other. Quite a story.
They had scarcely parted — he was hardly at his desk — when the friend he had left phoned to say that someone with whom they’d both been associated for years had just been found gassed in his car near the Country Club. It was the girl’s father. He was chairman of a bank, an investment trust, and connected with half a dozen other concerns, including perhaps (even those who knew him best would not be familiar with all his interests) the bankrupt construction company.
Thus it is with black men; they did not come into being when it was said, ‘There are no Amatongo.’ They came into being when it was already said, ‘There are Amatongo.’ But we do not know why the man which first came into being said, ‘There are Amatongo.’