Shinza didn’t rise; challengingly casual, by white men’s standards — but he made a real effort to talk to Boxer about the things that interested him. Shinza, unexpectedly, knew quite a lot about cattle; as he did about everything one doubted in him. His attitude towards Boxer reminded Bray of that of a grown man visiting one of his old housemasters; a combination of kindliness and slightly resentful pity, with the consciousness of having outdistanced the teacher beyond even his understanding. When Shinza had gone off in Mpana’s old car, Boxer said innocently, “Now let’s settle down and have a drink. I hope to Christ you didn’t give him anything. He’s much too grand to pay back.”
“But I thought you’d refused him a loan.”
“You’re damn right I refused. Donkey’s years ago. He wanted money to start the political business — their party—you know. But Mpana, that other old devil, he once asked a bull off me, for studno wonder his herd’s so flourishing. Never saw a penny. I’ll go down there one day and look over his heifers and say, look, old man, I recognize my daughters in your house — you know the sort of thing, he’d appreciate it.”
He had to spend the evening with Boxer. A long — interred loneliness — born not so much of solitude as of single — mindedness — stirred to weak impulse in the man. Cloudy bottles of wine bought from the Lebanese importer on some rare visit to the capital were brought out and opened without comment (Boxer, like Shinza, had a certain delicacy) but in a sense of occasion. Boxer talked incessantly as usual, with lucid precision and even with style, of his animal husbandry, pasture ecology, and his extraordinary observation of the strange form of life manifested in ticks — a description of the sub — life of the silence and patience of parasitism. He was oddly changed without his hat; his forehead, half — way up where the hat rested day in and day out, was white and damp — looking, creased as a washerwoman’s palm. Real nakedness belongs to different parts of the body in different people; here was where his nakedness was, in this exposed cranium, luminous as the wine went down and produced a sweat. Never mind the ticks — he himself appeared to Bray as some strange form of life. Bray listened with the bored fascination with which once, just before he left England, he had sat with Olivia through a space film, his own sense of life lying strongly elsewhere.
Chapter 13
He was writing to Mweta when he looked up just as the yellow dress that he knew so well became visible, approaching through the scrub. She was hidden and appeared again, nearer; he stood up to wait. Just this way sometimes, in the early mornings or evenings, he kept dead still while a female buck that probably fed on the golf — course during the night moved silently, quite near. But his body had associations of its own with the yellow dress, robust but no less tender; there was a surge of pleasure that he would press against her in a moment, when they met. And then she came hurrying out onto the garden grass and there was a check — something different about her — as if she had sent someone else, smiling, in her place. As she reached him he saw that, of course, her hair was pulled up and tied back. He said, “Darling, I was hoping you’d notice the car was back, as soon as you got up—” and as he put his hand out behind her head he was suddenly checked again, and this time of her volition as she stopped dead a foot away from him, her palms raised for silence or to hold him off, her face bright, conspiratorial, pained and yet half — giggling. “They’re just behind me — the children, Gordon. We’re coming to invite you to drinks for him tonight. I’ve told him I’ve been doing typing for you in the evenings. It’s all right.”
His body died back first, before his mind. He said, “Why bring him here, Rebecca?”
She was gazing at him, passionately, flirtatious, giggling, ablaze. He had never seen her like that. “The children, you ass. They keep on talking about you. It’s obvious we’re running in and out your house all the time. It’d look funny if we didn’t come now.”
“My God, why didn’t you say when he was coming. I could have stayed away for a few days.” He withdrew into what she had called his “elderly” voice, meaning, he knew, in her generous and unresentful way, that it put the distance of social background, education and assurance, rather than age, between them.
“Oh don’t be idiotic.” She pleaded, tears like tears of laughter standing hot in her eyes. “It’s perfectly all right. You don’t know him. He’d never think anything. He’s not like that. He’s very attractive to women. It never occurs to him that I could ever look at anybody else. I’ve told you. He’ll go away again soon. It’s quite all right.”
She stood there, a schoolgirl about to stuff her hand into her mouth to stifle a give — away of hysterical guilt before authority. He was amazed at her as much as angry at himself for in some way appearing to himself as a fool. He was about to say, And what we think — my dear girl, doesn’t it occur to you that I don’t really want to meet him — but the children running like puppies before the man burst into chatter, almost upon them, and a voice that he thought of immediately as somehow Irish in its effortless persuasiveness was making an entry, talking, talking— “—That’s a tree for a tree — house, Clivie, now! That’s what you call a tree! You could build one big enough to put a camp bed in, there—” “And a stove, to cook—” The skinny little girl jumped up and down for attention. “I’ll show you — I always climb it!”—The smaller boy scrambled ahead, ignoring his mother and Bray. “Don’t you say good morning to James, don’t you say good morning?” She caught him up and held him struggling— “Leave me! Leave me! Leave me!” She laughed, imprisoning him vengefully, while he kicked and blazed at her, his black eyes fierce with tears.
“Becky, for God’s sake — why does it have to be mayhem and murder wherever we walk in.”
She dropped the child, laughing at its huge rage and at the reproach. The little boy trying half — fearfully to kick at his mother’s shins always had had the definitive cast of features that in a child shows a strongly inherited resemblance. Now Bray saw the face that had been there in the child’s. The husband was surprising; but perhaps he would have been so however he had materialized, simply because he hadn’t existed for Bray at all. He was unusually good — looking in a very graceful and well — finished way, rather a small man — but, again, that was perhaps only from Bray’s height. Five foot ten or so — tall enough to stand sufficiently for male pride above Rebecca. He wore young men’s clothes elegantly, tight beige trousers belted on the hips, a foulard tied in the open neck of his shirt. Rebecca in her yellow dress and rubber — thong sandals looked shabby beside him. He wore a small bloodstone on one of the little fingers of his strong, olive — coloured hands and his face was smoothly olive — coloured with the large, even — gazing shining black eyes of the little boy, and the dull — red fresh mouth. On the man the face had a C — shaped line of laughter just marking the end of the lips on either side, and fine quizzical spokes at the outer corners of the eyes. His dark hair was prematurely silvering, like an actor’s streaked for distinction. He was saying, “I suppose you’re used to all this racket my crowd kick up. I think Becky’s let them run a bit wild, she’s too soft. Yes — I’m going to have to tan your bottoms for you—” He turned with a mock growl on the children, who shrieked with laughter, the little one still with tears undried. “—But that’s a marvellous tree there you’ve got for a tree — house, I don’t think I’d be able to keep my hands off it, even if I didn’t have any children around, I’d have a little retreat of my own up there, electric light, and pull the ladder up after me—”