— Did you have money? — She knew it was impossible that he could have made free of the still-thick swatch of notes, lying swollen as the leaves of a book that has got wet and dried again, in the suitcase on which Gina, cross and unaware of anyone, as she always was in the early mornings, was sitting.
— Is fifteen rand thirty-five. — So it was he would announce the cents owed him when he had paid, out of his own pocket, the surcharge on a letter delivered by the postman while the lady of the house was out.
— Bam, we must pay July. — She shooed Gina off the suitcase.
— We’ll pay. We’ll pay. Did anyone see you — I mean, say anything? Ask any questions? What’s happening there?—
He smiled and gave his customary high-pitched grunt of amusement when asked something obvious, to him. — Plenty people is know me. I’m from here since I’m born, isn’t it? Everyone is greet me.—
— Is it quiet there? No fighting?—
He laughed. — But they tell me at the mine there’s plenty trouble. People are coming home from there, they don’t want to stay, they say there’s burning, the houses, everything. Like in town. And the India’s coming too expenses. This it’s short, that it’s short. Sugar … Even box matches, you must fight for get it.—
— The mine?—
Bam answered her. — There’s an asbestos mine about sixty kilometres in the other direction — west. I suppose a lot of the men sign up to work there.—
— Some soldiers was coming by the shop. They tell me, last week. The India he’s run away when he see them.—
— So who keeps the shop open?—
— No — (he was amused) — when the soldiers they went, the India’s come back. He’s there, there, in the shop.—
The little boy Royce made a dash from the bed and gained the pillar of July’s thigh. Holding on, leaning, in confused regression to babyhood, he stopped his mouth with his thumb and confronted his parents with the lowered gaze of some forgotten defiance. The black man lifted and carried the child back to bed. The parents were amiably given an order. — Just now when the rain is coming slow, I call you. I send someone, you come. — He put on the raincoat and was digging in the pockets. — Here, I bring for you — He tossed up in his palm and presented to her two small radio batteries.
— Oh how marvellous. How clever to remember. — He had heard her say it all when friends brought her flowers or chocolates.
He grinned and swayed a little, as they did. — Now you listen nice again. — It was the small flourish of his exit.
She considered the batteries in her hand; smiled at the well-meaning — not even a new battery would bring the voices from back there if the radio station should be hit.
— Put them where it’s dry.—
There was only the suitcase, and even that was stained with damp moving up from where it rested on the floor. — If we could find a couple of bricks to raise it on. — But bricks were a cherished commodity; in every hut, they were used to raise beds. Where was Bam to find bricks for her? She found her own solution. — Ask July.—
She was quite competent at making porridge, now. It was the little community’s own meal, grown by them and stamped by the women in big wooden jars. It looked more like bits of coarse broken yellow china than the sugar-fine grains commercially milled. It tasted better, too, than the packaged stuff, rough as it was. Everyone knew that; it was sold in health shops and eaten by white food-faddists with honey and butter … Salt! He had brought salt, at least. That was what had been missing, now she would be able to put salt in the water in which she boiled the meal.
People — black people — would certainly have seen him at the store, in possession of the yellow bakkie.
— So he turns up there as if the millennium has already arrived.—
She was stirring the meal thickening on the Primus. Spoon dripping in her hand, she looked at Bam, considering what could be done for him rather than what he had said. — But jam will be good — a dollop of jam with this … — She stirred as if to shift their energies. — He did bring things.—
Chapter 8
There was the moment to ask him for the keys. But it was let pass.
They stood in the midday sun and watched, over at the deserted dwelling-place, the yellow bakkie being reversed, bucking forward, leaping suddenly backwards again; kicking to a stop. July was at the wheel. His friend was teaching him to drive.
After days of rain hot breath rose from everything, the vegetation, the thatch, the damp blankets of all patterns and colours hung out over every bush or post that would spread them. Submission to the elements was something forgotten, back there. You shivered, you had no dry clothes to replace wet ones. The hearth-fire that filled the hut with smoke was the centre of being; children, fowls, dogs, kittens came as near to it as the hierarchy of their existence allowed. The warmth that food brought — blood chafing into life — came from it, where the clinkers of wood, transparent with heat, made the porridge bubble vigour. Bam and Maureen had longed for cigarettes, for a drink of wine or spirits, their children had craved for sweet things; but in the days of rain, the small fire they never let die satisfied all wants.
A shimmer of heat like a flock of fast-flying birds passed continually across the movements of the vehicle. He was getting the hang of it.
When the lesson petered out he and his friend sat about on their hunkers — too far away to make out what they were doing; just talking, no doubt, July stimulated and eager to communicate, as everyone is when acquiring a new skill, the stages at which mastery eluded or came to him. Walking back through the valley, he waved jubilantly when he was near enough to recognize and be recognized.
— I would never have thought he would do something like that. He’s always been so correct. — Bam paused to be sure she accepted the absolute rightness, the accuracy of the word. — Never gave any quarter, never took any, either. A balance. In spite of all the inequalities. The things we couldn’t put right. Oh, and those we could have, I suppose.—
Gratitude stuffed her crop to choking point. — We owe him everything.—
Her husband smiled; it didn’t weigh against the keys of the vehicle, for them.
Oh, she didn’t deny that. She was setting out the facts before herself, a currency whose value had been revised. It was not only the bits of paper money that could not supply what was missing, here.
— I’d give him the keys any time. I could teach him to drive, myself — he hasn’t asked me. All right — someone has to get supplies for us …—
— As long as the money lasts.—
— The money! We’ll be out of here, with plenty of money. — Habit assumed the male role of initiative and reassurance — something he always had on him, a credit card or cheque-book. She would not look at him, where it had passed from him, and remark his divestiture.
July’s wave had been innocent. He came with their supply of wood — all still so damp, the whole settlement was hazed bluish from everyone’s cooking-fires, once more established outdoors. Bam spoke up with independent pleasantness. — You shouldn’t bother. I’ve told you. I can chop my own wood. You mustn’t do it.—
— The women bring the wood. You see all the time, the women are doing it. — It was an issue not worth mentioning; he was enthusiastic about his prowess with the vehicle. — You know I’m turning round already? I’m know how to go back, everything. My friend he’s teaching me very nice.—