Chapter 6
He doesn’t worry about being seen, either. I know that he comes straight up through the front entrance of the building, so that the watchman, who sits on his box on the lookout for people sneaking up to the servants’ rooms on the roof by way of the back stairs, won’t bother him, and if he met the caretaker — somehow he doesn’t — he’d spin her a plausible, breezy yarn to account for his presence, and get away with it, too. There are some Africans who can do these things; others can’t move a step without getting entangled in the taboos all round their feet. I learnt that while Max was working with them. When he — Luke — stood in the doorway I realized that he is not present to me in any way when I don’t see or hear him. He exists only when his voice is on the other end of the telephone or when he stands there like this, a large, grinning young man, filling his clothes. And yet I felt happy to see him. He is immediately there — one of those people whose clothes move audibly, cloth on cloth, with the movement of muscle, whose breathing is something one is as comfortably aware of as a cat’s purr in the room, and whose body-warmth leaves fingerprints on his glass. He came in heavily and I put down the catch on the Yale. ‘Good — great — good to see you …’ He put his hands at once on the top of my arms and let them slide down towards the elbows, squeezing me gently. We stood there a moment, grinning, flirting. ‘And you, I’d forgotten what you look like …’ ‘Hey, what’s this, what’s here — have I been away so long?’ It was a light hair he had found and pulled out, on top of my head. ‘Nonsense, it’s the newest thing. They do it at the hairdresser, it’s called streaking …’ It was a game; he gave me a little appraising lift, with the heel of the hand, on the outer sides of my breasts, as one says, ‘There!’, and we went into the living room.
He was talking, wandering round the room, looking, touching here and there, to establish intimacy at once, to show that he was at home; or reading the signs — who had been there, what sort of claims had left their mark, what was the state of my life expressed there. I could see that — from the point of view of information — he missed the flowers that, to me, walking into a room like this, would have had something to say immediately. But, fairly familiar though he may be with the normal trappings of white people’s homes, he’s not familiar enough to notice the significant difference between a bunch of flowers that a woman like me might have bought on a street-corner, and an expensive bouquet from a florist. ‘I came down on Tuesday — no, it was very late we left, Wednesday, early on Wednesday morning, really. Something wrong with the car —’
‘Naturally.’ I held up the brandy bottle in one hand, the open wine bottle in the other.
‘Oh anything. Brandy. Well, the fan belt was gone and the chappie I was with —’
‘Aren’t you here with the truck? How’s old Reba?’
‘Okay; he just sticks at home these days and leaves me to do the moving around. He’s had a lot of trouble with his wife — I don’t know, she bumps into things without realizing. Something with the balance. The doctor can’t find out. As a matter of fact, Reba said to ask you.’
‘Well, I’m not a doctor … it sounds like middle ear.’
‘Yes, that’s right, that’s what the doctor says, but she’s not keen …’ I laughed — ‘But she can’t pick and choose — there simply is such a thing as a middle ear, and if its function is disturbed you can lose your balance.’
‘Well I know, but she’s only got two ears, she says —’ He wanted to make us laugh at African logic.
I gave him his brandy, and I went to the kitchen and quickly turned on the gas under the meat and mixed the dressing with the salad, using my unwashed hands as I always do when there’s nobody to see.
He heard me clattering about in there and when I came out with the tray, I said to his broad smile, ‘What is it now?’ and he said, ‘That’s what I like about white girls, so efficient. Everything goes just-like-that.’
‘Oh, I’m making a special effort,’ I said, putting the bread and salad and butter on the table.
‘Oh I’m appreciative,’ he came back.
I was in and out, and each time I came into the living room he was an audience; then he held the baboon, amused, I could see in his face, full of curiosity, feeling that he had put his hand on my life — ‘So you’ve been fixing the monkey, eh? You keep busy all the time.’
‘It’s Bobo’s — my son.’
‘Nice thing for a little boy,’ he said, stroking the fur with one finger.
‘Not so little any more. Maybe too old for it, now.’
‘Man, I could play with a thing like that myself.’
I don’t know whether he’s professionally affable or if he really experiences the airy, immediate response to his surroundings that he always shows. Sometimes, when his great eyes are steady with attention to what I’m saying, there’s a flicker — just a hair’s-breadth flicker — that makes me aware that he’s thinking, fast, in his own language, about something else.
He said, smiling, holding me in the admiring, kidding gaze that I rather enjoy, ‘Can’t you sit down and relax a while?’ Much of his small talk is in the style of American films he has seen, but it fits quite naturally, just as the rather too hairy, too tweedy jacket he wore was all right, on him. The delicious scent of onions stewing in butter grew as we talked. I asked about the Basutoland elections, and we were both content to warm up on neutral ground, so to speak. Then we got on to the position of the South African refugees there. He began to complain of the restrictions placed upon them by the British administration, referring to it as ‘your English friends’, and I protested — ‘My friends? Why my friends? Though I pity the poor devils, having to deal with a pack of squabbling political refugees —’ ‘A-ah, they play nicely along with the South African government, don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘Specially the PAC chaps,’ I said. Our voices rose and we were laughing. ‘Beating each other up between speeches!’ But under the laughter — or using the laughter — he veered away from the subject, that was too closely related to his visits to Johannesburg, would perhaps lead us too quickly to a point he would judge when to reach. I know that he doesn’t come to see me for nothing. There’s always a reason. Though once at least (the last time he came) he’s gone away again without my finding out what it was; something must have indicated to him that he wouldn’t get whatever it was that he wanted, anyway. He’s nobody’s fool, young Luke.