Lyndsay has taken the children down to the low wooden barrier on the verge of the pool. Is the susurration louder or muffled by the overhang of the cliff and awareness of the crowding hills; it encloses her along with the imperceptible mist rather than comes through the ears. There was a dinner at the house of a judge whose colleague she is about to be, she was placed at table as unattached guests are beside another apparently unattached guest, in the male-female protocol. He is a retired judge from some other region of the country – she would hardly be partnered with somebody younger. The talk is of politics, the last elections and the President's appointment of a woman as Minister of Justice. If the man assumes that his neighbour welcomes the appointment because she is herself a woman, he is in for what no doubt will be a surprise. Her contribution to the comments in chorus above the plates and flower-piece: I'm celebrating the Minister not because she is a woman and so am I, but because she is exceptionally well qualified for the portfolio. If it had been a man with the same credentials, I'd be raising my glass to him. There was laughter and bravos from several of the men, and a glance-shaft of disapproval from a woman. But no-one could question the judge-elect's position on human rights.
Klara and Nicholas are shaking the slats of the barrier and have to be stopped. Klara's angry: Swim! Swim! A new word acquired along with the swimming lessons she was having in company with Nickie. There are two small boys flashing darkly agile skinny legs, paddling at the edge of the water although there is a sign indicating that this is forbidden, a rule ignored by the trio of women, two wearing the hijab, to whom they belong. Hopeless to explain, even to Paul's son, that nothing must disturb this habitat. Klara's begun to collect leaves and throw them at the pool, but always safely misses.
Probably it was the remark about the appointment of the woman Minister that made him more interested in his dinner partner with whom he had engaged in casual exchange before the subject animated the guests. Must have been told she was about to go to the Bench – a hostly precaution against the embarrassment of asking, And what do you do? He'd also picked up something, one of those useful scraps that start a conversation. And you're interested in archaeology, we all need a break when on the Bench, I know too well. No, that was her husband; and since the spouse wasn't in the place occupied by the retired judge, there was the casual explanation, He's visiting sites in Mexico. The liveliness of the continuing political discussion put an end to the subject.
It emerged easily that they held views of a judiciary in their transformed country in common, with the intriguing circumstance that he was viewing participation from his past on the Bench under apartheid segregation law and she was about to enter her appointment in a democracy. Seventy or a year or two older, then; no attempt to draw remaining strands of blond-grey hair across the bald head above a cliff forehead, tall and upright, looked still to have his own teeth. He sat across other tables in the restaurants where there followed invitations to dinner with him. Why not. He is a colleague with interests in the theatre and art exhibitions apart from his successfully concluded profession, no avocation, just the pastime pleasures of a life. He speaks of his wife who died two years ago. She has found it honest in the openness that excludes familiarity, with someone her own kind, a colleague in law, to tell him that she is parted from Adrian Bannerman. He does not intrude any questions.
Now she hears from a friend that he wants to marry her. Only yesterday, in the course of a phone conversation with a woman for whom a call is a confession of her own intimate decisions and a preoccupation with those of others. The man 'is in love with her'. At his age, more than sixty-five, when it does, can happen. They have not gone to bed.
She picks up Klara, this circumstance of hers, happened, chosen, to distract the child, pointing out a big black bird balanced there on the rock.
Marry her. Do you become a virgin again, to an ageing man? That's why first there's a rumour as a preparation for the unexpected passionate kiss in place of the civilised goodnight peck between new friends, which she tolerated, come on – half-enjoyed – put down to the bottle of good wine finished over dinner. For him, not to be attributed to wine but as a show of confidence in his ability – still – as a lover. The idea of marriage a kind of delicacy, a prelude, because they are not young, to becoming lovers.
Klara struggles, she is not interested in something you can't grab for, far away.
The water is so loud you could almost shout against it without being heard. Not here in the nature conservation park or in Stavanger.
Middle-age folly – how old, in my forties. But our time after, and the last time whenever it was. Adrian.
The last man inside me.
Mate for life.
Klara slides free down that body.
His mother rejoined Paul who was reading out to his wife further information he had found in an array of pamphlets on a bench. Only two eggs, that's the entire clutch. It'll happen next month, June. The first egg laid hatches and is followed about a week later by a second. The two chicks, known as Cain and Abel. The first-born, Cain, has already grown when Abel comes out of his shell. Cain and Abel fight and generally Abel is killed by Cain and thrown from the nest. The survivor is fed by both parents until around December when it's able to fly… five years to reach adulthood and black plumage… time for the eagle to find its own mate and territory.
Cain and Abel. But what if one chick's a female – suppose you can't call one of these birds a hen.
Benni/Berenice is right. Lyndsay offers – She also gets kicked out, I suppose, it's a way of keeping the balance of nature, Paul? Neither too many nor too few males and females for breeding. But it's horrible. -
Leaning on the balustrade of rough steps hewn into the cliff, the language of the pamphlet in hand fails to represent the being of the withdrawn black entity on the bed of dead wood and the other disappearing off into the sky and returning in the guise of a menace or as deliverance of omniscience, as the surveyors' plans and the reports he writes fail to represent the Okavango or the Pondoland dunes. Oh this is not the smallness of man stuff, against nature. Romanticising what's too heavy to handle. Cain and Abel. The old Bible provides an object lesson here in the non-human, the creatures who according to evolutionary hierarchy go back too far to have developed a morality.