As she left the kitchen a few meaningless echoes of what had happened to her went back and forth — are you all right yes I’m all right are you sure yes I’m all right.
She slept through her parents’ return and next morning said she’d had flu.
He could no longer be an unnoticed presence in the house, outside her occupation with her work and the friends she made among the other junior employees, and her preoccupation, in her leisure, with the discothèque and cinema where the hand-holding and sex-tussles with local boys took place. He said, Good afternoon, as they saw each other approaching in the passage between the family’s quarters and his room, or couldn’t avoid coinciding at the gate of the tiny area garden where her mother’s geraniums bloomed and the empty milk bottles were set out. He didn’t say ‘miss’; it was as if the omission were assuring, Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone, although I know all about what you do, everything, I won’t talk about you among my friends — did he even have any friends? Her mother told her he worked in the kitchens of a smart restaurant — her mother had to be sure a lodger had steady pay before he could be let into the house. Vera saw other foreigners like him about, gathered loosely as if they didn’t know where to go; of course, they didn’t come to the disco and they were not part of the crowd of familiars at the cinema. They were together but looked alone. It was something noticed the way she might notice, without expecting to fathom, the strange expression of a caged animal, far from wherever it belonged.
She owed him a signal in return for his trustworthiness. Next time they happened to meet in the house she said — I’m Vera.—
As if he didn’t know, hadn’t heard her mother and father call her. Again he did the right thing, merely nodded politely.
— I’ve never really caught your name.—
— Our names are hard for you, here. Just call me Rad. — His English was stiff, pronounced syllable by syllable in a soft voice.
— So it’s short for something?—
— What is that?—
— A nickname. Bob for Robert.—
— Something like that.—
She ended this first meeting on a new footing the only way she knew how — Well, see you later, then — the vague dismissal used casually among her friends when no such commitment existed. But on a Sunday when she was leaving the house to wander down to see who was gathered at the pub she went up the basement steps and saw that he was in the area garden. He was reading newspapers — three or four of them stacked on the mud-plastered grass at his side. She picked up his name and used it for the first time, easily as a key turning in a greased lock. — Hullo, Rad.—
He rose from the chair he had brought out from his room. — I hope your mother won’t mind? I wanted to ask, but she’s not at home.—
— Oh no, not Ma, we’ve had that old chair for ages, a bit of fresh air won’t crack it up more than it is already.—
She stood on the short path, he stood beside the old rattan chair; then sat down again so that she could walk off without giving offence — she left to her friends, he left to his reading.
She said — I won’t tell.—
And so it was out, what was between them alone, in the family house. And they laughed, smiled, both of them. She walked over to where he sat. — Got the day off? You work in some restaurant, don’t you, what’s it like?—
— I’m on the evening shift today. — He stayed himself a moment, head on one side, with aloof boredom. — It’s something. Just a job. What you can get.—
— I know. But I suppose working in a restaurant at least the food’s thrown in, as well.—
He looked out over the railings a moment, away from her. — I don’t eat that food.—
She began to be overcome by a strong reluctance to go through the gate, round the corner, down the road to The Mitre and the whistles and appreciative pinches which would greet her in her new flowered Bermudas, his black eyes following her all the way, although he’d be reading his papers with her forgotten. To gain time she looked at the papers. The one in his hand was English. On the others, lying there, she was confronted with a flowing script of tails and gliding flourishes, the secret of somebody else’s language. She could not go to the pub; she could not let him know that was where she was going. The deceptions that did for parents were not for him. But the fact was there was no deception: she wasn’t going to the pub, she suddenly wasn’t going.
She sat down on the motoring section of the English newspaper he’d discarded and crossed her legs in an X from the bare round knees. — Good news from home?—
He gestured with his foot towards the papers in his secret language; his naked foot was an intimate object, another secret.
— From my home, no good news.—
She understood this must be some business about politics, over there — she was in awe and ignorance of politics, nothing to do with her. — So that’s why you went away.—
He didn’t need to answer.
— You know, I can’t imagine going away.—
— You don’t want to leave your friends.—
She caught the allusion, pulled a childish face, dismissing them. — Mum and Dad… everything.—
He nodded, as if in sympathy for her imagined loss, but made no admission of what must be his own.
— Though I’m mad keen to travel. I mean, that’s my idea, taking this job. Seeing other places — just visiting, you know. If I make myself capable and that, I might get the chance. There’s one secretary in our offices who goes everywhere with her boss, she brings us all back souvenirs, she’s very generous.—
— You want to see the world. But now your friends are waiting for you—
She shook off the insistence with a laugh. — And you want to go home!—
— No. — He looked at her with the distant expression of an adult before the innocence of a child. — Not yet.—
The authority of his mood over hers, that had been established in the kitchen that time, was there. She was hesitant and humble rather than flirtatious when she changed the subject. — Shall we have — will you have some tea if I make it? Is it all right? — He’d never eaten in the house; perhaps the family’s food and drink were taboo for him in his religion, like the stuff he could have eaten free in the restaurant.
He smiled. — Yes it’s all right. — And he got up and padded along behind her on his slim feet to the kitchen. As with a wipe over the clean surfaces of her mother’s sink and table, the other time in the kitchen was cleared by ordinary business about brewing tea, putting out cups. She set him to cut the gingerbread — Go on, try it, it’s my mother’s homemade. — She watched with an anxious smile, curiosity, while his beautiful teeth broke into its crumbling softness. He nodded, granting grave approval with a full mouth. She mimicked him, nodding and smiling; and, like a doe approaching a leaf, she took from his hand the fragrant slice with the semicircle marked by his teeth, and took a bite out of it.
Vera didn’t go to the pub any more. At first they came to look for her — her chums, her mates — and nobody believed her excuses when she wouldn’t come along with them. She hung about the house on Sundays, helping her mother. — Have you had a tiff or something?—
As she always told her bosom friends, she was lucky with her kind of mother, not strict and suspicious like some. — No, Ma. They’re okay, but it’s always the same thing, same things to say, every weekend.—
— Well… shows you’re growing up, moving on — it’s natural. You’ll find new friends, more interesting, more your type.—