His mother became somehow part of the life returned to, taken up, in his house; as if with the end of its occupation as a place of quarantine and in the absence of the father, the old house was no longer home. She was quite often found with Nicholas and Benni, when he came back to the city, to his life there. Seems she had some sort of relationship, if not close at least comfortable, to the combination personality Berenice/Benni with whom she had little in common. Well – himself and the boy. As the archaeological holiday, the fulfilment of an avocation long denied – that was how it came to be unspokenly accepted – indeed extended it took on something of the established ordinariness that had been achieved by Lyndsay in the period of a quarantine. Apparently she filled her time in the company of other women rather than the married couples who were her friends and Adrian's. Her son supposed this was usual with women not looking for a new man, or disadvantaged by age or a sense of distaste for such a pursuit; not something he would have given a thought to if it hadn't been out of concern about his mother. Apart from the parents' circle of mutual friends, she had tended to have hers among the legal fraternity – fraternity, yes, because most judges and prominent lawyers were male. She brought to lunch one Sunday what it is clear was a particular new friend, not a lawyer but a social worker, and not a nice middle-class do-gooder like the ones who might be among the married couples, but a woman employee of the local government Social Welfare department. She was coloured, one in whose broad face, a composite image of the Khoi Khoi, San, Malay, Dutch, English, German and only the past knows what else, was pleasingly mixed. She was presented as Charlene-Somebody but cut in with a laugh, Just call me Charlene, that's me.
Lyndsay defined, in dismissal of modesty – She's been introducing me to the realities my colleagues and I only see as the end result. She took me yesterday to a hospice, no, I suppose you'd call it a halfway home for babies. Abandoned babies, some of them HIV-infected or already with AIDS. -
– Ghastly thought. That must have been hard to take. – Benni, like Adrian, is also honest, coming out with the crude reaction others would suppress in order not to appear to lack human feeling.
This Charlene sensed some explanation was appropriate for how the introduction to a reality came about, and also perhaps unable to suppress an impulse to show her quality in becoming mentor to someone in a high position of the authoritarian world. – Ag, you see, I've just been a witness in that big case, you know, my brother-in-law who was kicked out of his firm, his job, he was assistant manager in a supermarket, because he's got AIDS – how he got it, that's another story, not for me – the trade union made a case to defend him and Mrs Bannerman was the chief lawyer -
– Unlawful dismissal. We won. It's something of a test case with implication for others. Charlene Damons was an outstandingly good witness – the attorney who was supposed to prepare her said it was the other way about -
The two women laughed; this testimony must have been what led Lyndsay to take an interest in the woman. Obviously initiated some opportunity to talk to her; time has long passed when coffee shops were segregated and there was nowhere to go. Over the Sunday lunch Lyndsay encouraged voluble Charlene, who didn't need much urging while she composedly enjoyed her food and the usual wine the host's mother contributed, to tell about her work among people suffering HIV and AIDS, in particular workers employed in industry and chain stores.
– What happens to the babies? Many die? And if they survive, with treatment. They do get treatment? – Benni is wiping the traces of icecream from round Nickie's mouth.
– Many die. What can you do. They've been left in public toilets. Some in the street, the police find them and bring them in. -
– The mothers? -
– Nobody knows the mothers, who're the fathers. -
Lyndsay has been turned away, listening. – But when you see them, their faces. They look like someone. Not nobody. -
There's proof. Nickie, icecream-besmeared face, looking like – Paul, Benni, Lyndsay. Adrian. And progenitors farther back. As the elements that converge in the Okavango; as the natural forces of alchemy create the sand dunes secreting minerals from still earlier formations.
The new kind of family lunch passed uneventfully enough with the guest; Paul and Benni didn't encounter her again. Lyndsay was engaged in a new case, her next offering was not an individual but a letter, first of several, read out to the family as sometimes she brought along an email from Emma; a letter from Adrian telling something of whatever it was that he was living. A state awkward to categorise. Travels to the mountains, natal region of Zapata, more Rivera paintings seen, the weather. Archaeological excavations, of course. In one letter, he said he was thinking of writing something. The experience of seeing these unearthed accomplishments of the ancient past when you belong to an era where there are wars going on over who possesses weapons that could destroy all trace of it. (The letters were addressed like publicity leaflets headed 'The Occupier', 'Dear family' on the first page.) When Lyndsay came to these few sentences her distanced tone sounded to the others a sign that they were meant for her alone.
She probably wrote back – would she? – the same kind of letters with matters skimmed from the surface of what the family was living; whether there were words, residue of the exchanges of the personal, not the ancient, past, coming privately from her to him was her own affair, her son couldn't speculate any more than he could foresee any resolution the parents might come to for themselves.
The government's announced project for a Pondoland 'marine protected area' wasn't going to be any resolution for the sand dunes on that coast. It protected the waters alone. The Australian-based Mineral Commodities could still go ahead with their plan to mine twenty kilometres of the dunes. With Thapelo and Derek surrounded by a paper-territory of surveyors' maps and their own field notes, the team sat with representatives from Earthlife Africa and the Wildlife and Environmental Society following the trail of contradictory statements, a palimpsest over what was before them.
– The Minister's passing the buck. Just listen again. Environmental Affairs: 'The Minister remains opposed to the mining and instead supports ecotourism in the area. But ultimately the decision to mine on the Wild Coast rests with the Minister of Minerals and Energy.' Ja-nee. – Derek's jerks of the head mimic 'yes-no'.
– The Mineral Commodities outfit must have submitted for the Aussies the application to Minerals and Energy by now. Department's sitting on it. While that's going on and Mineral Commodities' spin doctors are lobbying, you can depend on that, we've got to keep pushing, man, pushing. They're going over the Pondoland Marine Park projects, they say, to 'assess' how it will affect their mining plans, but that's nonsense, shaya-shaya, their chief exec's already said the frontal dune and riverine systems had always been excluded from the mining areas – they're not – Thapelo hoists the flag of one of the surveyors' maps.