“But he’ll be working for South Africans. He’ll be paid in South African currency. But perhaps I’ll just renew — another eighteen months here. We’ll see. Anyway I want to put Alan and Suzi into a boarding school.”
“But not in South Africa.”
“Well, yes. I don’t fancy the idea of Rhodesia. And they can’t stay here much longer—” She was anxious not to hurt his feelings — she saw all occupations in personal terms — by suggesting that his great plans for education in the country were not good enough. “It’s just that, with the schools newly integrated, the standard has dropped like hell, and, you know, one can’t let one’s children come out of school half — baked.”
“Of course. For the time being only the African children benefit, while the white ones are at a bit of a disadvantage. But you wouldn’t really consider sending them to South Africa?”
She said again, “Oh I don’t know, they say the schools are good.”
He saw that she was thinking of the money; there was a chance that there would be money in South Africa, to pay for them. Under the surface, her life was laid on bedrock necessities like this, that made luxuries out of scruples as well as emotions. But he said, gently, “Here you are all living happily with the Tlumes. And you’ll send them there, to be brought up in the antiquated colonial way, to consider that their white skin sets them above other people.”
She smiled, slightly embarrassed and defiant. “Well, what about me? It was like that in Kenya. It’s only while they’re at school; they’ll grow out of it again.”
“Not everyone can be as natural as you,” he said.
She turned on her elbow again. “I don’t quite understand how you mean that.”
“You cling to reality,” he said. “They couldn’t condition you into the good old colonial abstractions — a nigger’s a nigger and a white man’s an English gentleman. You obstinately stick to other criteria — I don’t know what they are, but they certainly aren’t based on colour.”
“It’s a big fuss about nothing. If that was all you had to worry about …” She dropped her head, rolled back. Perhaps she was thinking about her “other criteria”—what they were. Perhaps she was dissatisfied with them — with herself. It was easy to decide for her that necessity ruled her life with beautiful simplicity, even where it was makeshift and compromised. What criterion was there for this invisible man to whom she was married but with whom she never seemed to live? And the obliging reputation she had among husbands of the little group left behind in the capital? He felt again as he had the first time they had been on the island beach, only this time she, this young woman, was present as he was in the state of immediate existence, curiously quiet and vivid, unmediated by what they both were in relation to other people and other times.
The fish eagles hunched indifferently on a dead tree out in the lake. If he tried to follow their gaze over the water, his own faltered out, dropped in distance; theirs was beyond the capacity of the human eye as certain sounds go beyond the register of the ear. She said, “Not as if they were ever going to be South Africans.”
“It’s a contradiction of your realism, you know. You can’t be realistic without principles — that’s just the convenient interpretation, that the realist accepts things as they are, even if those things express an unreal situation, a false one. You’re the one who should see over the head of that situation, and instinctively reject it even as a temporary one, for your children. That’s the practical application of principle.”
She mumbled into her crossed forearms, “I’ll remember that.”—He saw from the movement of her half — concealed cheek that she was smiling.
Ah yes, how nice to set oneself up as the mentor of a rather lonely young woman, to explain her to herself. “We’d better move, soon.”
She said, preoccupied, “And how long have you still got?”
“That’s up to me.”
“Your contract’s with yourself.” She was generously envious.
“Very convenient. And only I know what the terms are. Or I ought to.”
“Then you probably do.”
“Do I?”
“Oh yes. People do. We know all about ourselves. Al — ll about it.” She was scratching her scalp and paring the collected road — dust from beneath her nails, concentratedly, as if she were alone. He thought defensively, how very natural she was; he had always liked so much Olivia’s fastidiousness, her almost awesome lack of little disgusting personal habits. Olivia could never have gone to bed with someone who picked his nose….
They lingered on the island, and on the shore when they returned and paid for the use of the leaky pirogue, chaffing with the bandylegged fisherman in his athletic vest and torn pants. He seemed surprised at being paid at all; so far as he was concerned, he was busy with his net and they were welcome to his boat in the meantime.
But once he saw the money in his hand, he must suddenly have thought of something he wanted to buy, for he looked at it smiling, as if to say, what use is this to me? He said to Bray, in Gala, can’t you give me two — and-nine more? Bray didn’t have the change but the girl did, and they paid up, amused. So the drive back was started well on in the afternoon, and it was slower going, climbing the pass instead of descending it. They had just come out onto the savannah when Bray felt that there was a puncture. They changed the tyre without much trouble but did not get back home till well after dark. “This’s one of the times when one would like a good little restaurant to appear magically in Main Road, Gala.” She said something about having to get back to the children, anyway; but when they drove along under the weak, far — apart street — lights of the road where they lived, she seemed to forget her concern, and came into the house with him. Kalimo had the fire lit; the ugly room was perfumed with the soft, dry incense — smell of mukwa wood. They had bought a couple of bream at the lake, and wanted to cook them over the wood — ashes, but Kalimo carried them off. “Don’t fry them Kalimo, for heaven’s sake — grilled not fried—”
She laughed to see him trying to prevail. “If you are worried about the children …? You could dash over now? Kalimo won’t be ready for an hour if I know him.”
She went as if she had been intending to do so, but he saw that she wouldn’t have gone if he hadn’t said anything; and she was back within ten minutes. She had put on lipstick and her hair was brushed back, lank from the lake. She herself had the look of a child fresh from the bath. “Everything all right?”
“Oh Lord, yes. Fed, in bed. Trust Edna Tlume for that.” She had brought a packet of marshmallows: “For afterwards, with the coffee. Don’t you love them toasted?”
When Kalimo came in to clear the table he looked disapproving; she was squatting before the fire, watching carefully while the pink sweetmeats swelled on the end of a fork, wrinkled and slightly blackened. “Try one, Kalimo” she waved the fork at him, but he stumped out — the kitchen was the place for cooking.
She smoked one of Bray’s cigars. It was half — past ten by the time he heard Kalimo lock the kitchen door. She was resting her head and arms on her knees. He stroked her hair; such a banal caress — it did for dogs and cats, as well. She jerked up her head — in repudiation or response, he didn’t wait to understand — he put his face down to that small cup of bone at the base of her full neck and was at once launched, like the wooden cockleshell upon the lake, on the tide of another being, the rise and fall of her breathing, the even, hollow knock of her heart, the strange little sound of her swallowing.
She was smiling at him, slightly sadly.
“How long can you stay?”