What we could see of the feast through the camouflage net looked unbalanced, nutritionally speaking, and so unappetizing that safety measures hardly seemed necessary. The inevitable poultry, hacked into pieces, packets of Knick-Knacks, stacks of Sesamemates (apparently one needed to be on friendly terms with the food before one consumed it), swatches of sweat-beaded sweetmilk, jaundiced dips, lettuce.
‘And what are these?’
‘Buffalo wings.’
‘If buffaloes had wings, Mevrouw, they would certainly be a great deal bigger than this.’
‘If pigs had wings, they would taste like bacon.’
Where had she come by that? Sounded like a Wesselism. Could they have been seeing one another on the sly? He couldn’t possibly be taking piano lessons. Rummy more likely, or bumblepuppy.
I remembered fondly the spread Mrs Mavrokordatos had promised for the inaugural championships. ‘Mrs Mavrokordatos would have given us a good square meal. And if not that, then a smorgasbord.’ As it was, there was not a smorgas in sight, just these tubs of yellow margarine. Cheddar and Melrose wedges.
A rubbery nose nuzzled my hand. It proved to be Wessels, snuffling at me with the stopper on the end of his crutch. That fat nincompoop was so excited he could hardly contain himself.
‘Is everythink to taste?’ He poked the forbidden food with his finger. And then suddenly, improbably, as if she had been invisible until that moment: ‘Suzanna!’
‘Martinus!’
Such a quantity of hissing and steaming, you’d have thought they were a pair of Christmas puddings.
*
I am not easily discouraged. I returned to table No. 2. I meant to engage Spilkin in discussion this evening if it was the last thing I did. Mrs Hay had commandeered my chair, so I pulled another closer from the next table. The conversation was about salad dressings, knitting patterns, the declining fortunes of some soap-opera family or other, the ‘hit parade’ — but I could raise the tone in a moment. There was a point about dictionaries I had been harbouring, a point that illuminated the age-old tussle between forging ahead and maintaining standards, and I intended to make it, come hell or high water.
They were talking about something called ‘Magic Johnson’. A popular group, no doubt. It was all the opening I needed.
Speaking of Johnson … I was with Dr Johnson, I said, when it came to relying on dictionaries of current usage rather than the Academy for correctness. Language is changing all the time, I’m the first to admit it. But at any given moment, we must have standards of correctness. What would be the point of having dictionaries at all if that were not the case? I liken it, I said, to the act of proofreading itself, which I have often described, in which a rapid sequence of still points creates the illusion of constant motion. That got me to Horne Tooke, the philologist. ‘I was never very taken with Tooke,’ I remember saying. ‘The man was a radical. As for those closing e’s on forename and surname …’
But Spilkin would not be drawn. He kept switching the attention back to Darlene, to her sayings and doings, her comings and goings, her hemlines, her hairdos, her curry and rice.
*
Despite Spilkin’s efforts, Darlene’s dress sense was a subject soon exhausted, and the conversation turned inevitably to ‘one man, one vote’ and the coming election. A politician with the unconvincing name of Martin Sweet had showed up at the Home where Mrs Hay was now living to canvass support for his campaign, and she had divined that he would be the one to lead his people forth from bondage. He was the only candidate, she said, who would give The Madiba a run for his money. The name of his party would come to her in a minute.
I ventured the opinion that The Madiba might not be all he was cracked up to be. One shouldn’t expect too much of a man who had led such a sheltered existence. He had passed nearly thirty years of his life behind bars, and it would take more than a year or two in the outside world to catch up. What would he know of topical concerns?
Darlene shouted me down. The Madiba had more knowledge of the world in his pinkie, she said, than I had in my entire white body.
Now that we were on the subject of white bodies, Mevrouw Bonsma wanted to know how Wessels had broken his ankle, and so he retold the tall story about his apprehension of an armed bandit. His nonsense made everyone laugh. ‘You and your stories!’ Mevrouw Bonsma said. ‘What a pity Merle isn’t here. She would have loved it.’
‘It’s not like her to be late,’ I said.
She looked at me, appalled. ‘You haven’t heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘I’m sorry, Tearle, she passed away.’
‘Passed away?’ The phrase cut me to the quick. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Must be a month ago. I’m surprised you didn’t see it in the paper.’
‘Ag, no man. I was just wondering where old Merlé was.’
‘Jason said it was over quickly. She was at home until the end and then the hospice.’
‘She died? I didn’t even know she was ill. Were the two of you in touch?’
But she did not want to talk about it. It upset her too much, she said, it would spoil the evening. Mrs Hay awoke as if from a trance and said that no one was more shocked than she. Wessels declared that drinks were needed all round, for the nerves, and went to fetch them. There were no waiters tonight, it was self-service only.
A lost fascicle of ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ drifted down from the roof of my mind. Dinner at the Budgerigar. The maître d’ had recommended the duck and gone away to the kitchen. Fluxman took Georgina’s hand in his and carried it up to his lips (Alibians knew without even thinking to confine such gestures to the entrée). There was a faint zest of lemon on her fingers.
‘Whatever tomorrow brings, I want you to know that I will never allow anything unpleasant to happen to you.’
‘If it’s within your power.’
‘Exactly.’
Dead. Spadework for gravediggers. Graaff. Graf. Earl. Tearle. The doggerel of the interior life.
I could have killed Wessels. When he came back with the brandy, he’d taken a swig off the top of the bottle two fingers deep, I spotted it at once. ‘You said you got hold of her!’
‘I left a message with the mate.’
‘Douglas has been dead for years.’
‘With the domestic, Aubs-ss. What’s your case anyway?’
‘If you were more responsible, I wouldn’t have heard the news in this way, at a party of all places. We should call the whole thing off out of respect for her memory.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We haven’t seen Merle for ages.’
‘She wouldn’t want us to neither. She’d want us to enjoy ourself.’
Spilkin suggested that Mevrouw Bonsma play something to remind us of Merle, as a tribute to her, and she went to inspect the musical machinery in the corner.
‘We’ve got a responsibility to Tone as well. He’s gone to a lot of trouble.’
‘You can always go home,’ Darlene said. ‘We’ll understand.’
The news of Merle’s death was a blow. More so because I felt it not just as a personal loss, but as a professional failure. Mevrouw Bonsma had put her finger on it as surely as if it were middle C. How could I have missed the announcement? The sad fact was that I couldn’t bear to read the death notices any more. ‘Safe in God’s cave’ … ‘I will always remember your similes and laughter’ … For heaven’s sake! One was not even free from insult beyond the grave.
I had looked forward so keenly to showing her ‘The Proofreader’s Derby’ and thanking her publicly for her guidance. There was a line to that effect in my speech.