Just this once. By such narrow margins the group of girls who had grown from juniors to seniors together kept the status of trust that was traded in return for their taking over irksome small responsibilities from the teaching staff. A clique of senior prefects had discovered how to open, without breaking, the glass box that held the key to the dormitories’ fire escape; they slipped out regularly at night to go to parties. A foolproof line of supply and use of dagga was established; brought in by and bought off one of the black kitchen workers, it was smoked in the lab, where there were stronger odours to disguise its fragrance. The group shepherded little ones to Sunday school in town and took turns to disappear (someone had to represent the senior presence to the bible-class instructor) and meet boyfriends at a vacant lot. They were educating themselves for their world in Southern Africa in the way the school helplessly abetted, teaching them at morning prayers to love thy neighbour as thyself before they sat down for the day in classrooms where only white children were admitted.
Now and then one of these school-worldly girls went too far; for example, the one who went for a ride on a motorbike down Jameson Avenue during her turn to slip away from Sunday-school duty. She was seen by a parent as he came out of a Greek shop with cigarettes and the Sunday paper; seen in her school uniform with her spread thighs ‘clinging to the back of a boy’. The headmistress floundered embarrassedly through all the moral props; feminine modesty, the honour of the school, bad example to the innocent Sunday-school charges, and then, in a complicity both she and the girl understood perfectly, let her off just this once (with the punishment that would satisfy everyone: docking of half-term holiday) because the transgression was one accepted within their recognized code of virtues and concomitant vices.
Among the privileges granted to the senior girls was permission to go in mufti, in groups of not less than four but unaccompanied by a teacher, to a Saturday-afternoon cinema. The housemistress had to be told the title of the film to be seen; it was supposed to be an educational film, but there was not much choice in the few cinemas of Salisbury in the late Fifties. The housemistress had to approve Elvis Presley and James Dean. At the cinema the schoolgirls met a wider circle of boys than that of their counterpart school. Although Hillela’s hair, once out of the care of her aunt’s hairdresser, sprang elastically back to ripples again, she was as sought-after in the popcorn-smelling dark as anyone else. The cinemas were always full on Saturdays, right up to the back rows, which blacks and coloureds were allowed to occupy. There was the day she was struggling back through the crowded foyer at intermission with five icecream cones for her friends, and the tall boy with the sallow face and strange blond hair asked so nicely if he could help her. When they reached the row where her friends were sitting, he handed over the cones and disappeared to wherever his seat was. But she knew he had been looking at her, before, a number of times, while she had played her part: of not being aware of him. Then he began to smile at her when he saw her queueing for tickets, and she even waved casually back. Arriving for a James Dean she was to see for the second or third time, she said, Where’re you sitting? preparatory to asking if he wouldn’t like to sit with ‘us’.
He had promised to keep a seat for a friend; wouldn’t she come along with them, instead? His friend did not arrive, or did not exist. He did not shift his leg towards hers or take her hand. Now and then both had the same reaction to the film and instinctively would turn to smile at one another in the dark. The look of him, that had attracted her attention for some weeks, took on a strong bodily presence beside her. She did not expect this one to touch her, was not offended that he didn’t. When the lights went up she was glad to see his face. She liked particularly his eyes, a greeny-grey with hair-thin splinters of yellow sunburst in the iris, whose charm was that they seemed too luminous for his sallow skin and tarnished curly hair — like lights left burning in a room in daylight. His name was Don; he was an apprentice electrician. It was considered a catch to have a boy who was no longer at school; a grown-up. He spoke with an unfamiliar accent — Afrikaans, perhaps, but different from the Boere accent from South Africa that was made fun of at school. He explained that his family came from the Cape; they had lived in Salisbury only for the last five years. He had passed his matric in Salisbury; they discussed the subjects he had taken, and those she was studying for a more junior exam, now. He said he really wanted to be a lawyer; he was going to start studying by correspondence; but that wasn’t what he wanted, he wanted to go to a real university.
A lawyer? — One of my aunts is married to a lawyer. Not the aunt I stay with in the holidays — the other one.—
He nodded, looking first at her, then away from what he read there. — You’ll go to university, then.—
She did not seem to like being reminded of what lay beyond school. — Don’t know.—
— Well, maybe you’ll get a job.—
— Maybe.—
— My sisters want to be models and that. But girls like you … you can be anything.—
She had the instinct to console without thinking for what. — Oh I’m not rich. My father’s a rep, and he’s married again.—
— But your aunt?—